[Updated] After a one-year grace period that officials described as a “soft toss” approach, the Pasadena Rent Stabilization Department is now packaging cases of non-compliant landlords to send to the city prosecutor for legal action, Executive Director Helen Morales announced Thursday night.
The move signals a significant escalation in the city’s efforts to enforce its rental registration ordinance.
“We now are serious,” Morales declared during a meeting of the Rental Housing Board, issuing a stern warning to property owners who have failed to register their units by the October 31 deadline.
During the program’s first year, the department focused on education and outreach to encourage voluntary compliance. In the end, the first year reached 90% compliance.
But with the second-year deadline now passed and compliance at 87%, the gloves are coming off.
“We’re no longer in the soft toss area anymore,” Morales stated. “Now we’re in, ‘okay, you didn’t do it last year. You didn’t do this year.’ We’re going to bundle it and send it off and see how we can move these forward because we’re serious about gaining a hundred percent compliance.”
Morales confirmed she has already been in conversation with the city prosecutor about the issue and had met with a department manager just this week to begin the process of preparing the cases for referral.
The department’s regulations require a two-step notification process before legal action can be taken. Landlords receive a first and then a second notice of non-compliance. Those who still fail to register will be the first to face prosecution.
“The regulations do provide that. We give them a first notice and a second notice. We’re doing that now,” Morales explained. “And then those will be packaged up to send to the city prosecutor’s office. So we are looking at enforcement.”
She issued a direct appeal to property owners who have yet to comply: “Anybody else who’s out there that didn’t register, please go online and register because we now are serious and we are imposing penalty fees.”
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