Recently, a reader asked where she might find a copy of the City of Lakewood’s Rental Housing Safety Program Checklist. I promised I would do the research and then make it easy for her and others to have the checklist at their fingertips.
Lakewood has done an excellent job developing a website related to the Rental Housing Safety Program, commonly known as the R.I.P.
The following three links directing you to Lakewood’s website should help.
City of Lakewood – Rental Housing Safety Program. (General website for RHSP).
Single Family / Duplex Rental Housing Safety Program Checklist.
Multi-Family Rental Housing 2-Part Safety Program Checklist.
After scanning the three RHSP Checklists, I have to say that most of the items on the checklists form an intelligent roadmap for any property owner wishing to own and maintain a safe and sanitary rental property. I would give the City of Lakewood an A- for their checklist structure.
I am issuing the checklists an A- and not a perfect grade letter A because there are at least a small number of checklist provisions that some property owners may consider troublesome and potentially problematic.
When thinking about the RHSP, there are three components in the rental property inspection process equation.
Component #1: The inspector must be intelligent, knowledgeable, reasonable, and possess common sense along with positive moral and ethical qualities. The inspector and all other city staff must be free of ego badge-happy tendencies and mental defects.
Component #2: The RHSP Checklist must be intelligently designed and fair. I would say, with few exceptions, Lakewood has done an excellent job with their checklists.
Component #3: There must be an avenue of appeal within the City of Lakewood if a property owner does not agree with an inspector’s adverse findings.
If you own rental property, I encourage you to review the checklists, and if you have a concern(s), please share them with our readers and the City of Lakewood.
Defacement of Property:
Property remains free of graffiti or other markings.
I guess I will paint over the mural on the side of the house.
Well I may have to remove the house numbers as they could be misconstrued. I will paint the numbers on the curb.
What’s my prize for pointing out the typos in the Single Family / Duplex Rental Housing Safety Program Checklist? And yes, there’s more than one. In an official document. Sigh.
Ms. Lundgren,
Thank you for pointing that out. I have been so busy with an amazing number of other defects and problems related to the R.I.P. I did not notice the typo errors.
There is an obvious pattern of incompetency in the city program. The R.I.P. looks like a program dreamed up by a member of city staff who is a known incompetent and mental defective. I dare not mention the name for all kinds of obvious reasons, but it seems the R.I.P. is jam packed with errors, mistakes, and issues. The R.I.P. will probably keep on the same pathway of incompetency until it implodes and takes part of the city with it.
The City Council bit off on city staff’s program and now they seem stuck with it. It takes a lot of moral courage to admit you were wrong and then unwind a mistake as big as the R.I.P.
I could be wrong. Maybe it wa City Council’s idea. No one has said. But if that is the case, that would make the matter even worse.
Joseph Boyle
WOT.