Salinas moves to implement a rental registry, minus an inspection provision.

The idea seems simple enough: Create a city-wide rental registry so that officials know what their housing stock is and can scale relevant services such as assistance programs and landlord-tenant mediation.

But it gets more complicated in sorting out the technicalities, something Salinas city officials have been doing since 2018. Earlier plans called for not just creating a rent registry but also an inspection and code enforcement program. Now, with guidance from the Housing Policy Technical Advisory Committee, the idea has been pared down to a rent registry that would include the landlord’s name, phone number, address and list of the units they are renting.

Megan Hunter, director of the Salinas Community Development Department, says the inspection program was removed because many tenants feared that any repair costs would be passed along in the form of higher rents.

Hunter says the reduced scope of establishing a registry would help the city to track the current rent housing stock and make sure landlords are maintaining their properties. That’s something she says will help rents: “If housing stock is removed from the market because of its condition, then everyone’s rents go up because it’s based on the amount of supply.”

City Council gave the rent registry its blessing with a 6-1 vote on Jan. 18. City staff are now working on finalizing the ordinance and fees the landlord would pay per unit. The rental registry ordinance will come back to council for a final vote in March.

Hunter says the costs will be minimal, and she expects fees to cover the costs of running the program. Under a preliminary budget, a property owner renting a single-family unit would pay $20 per year, or about $1.66 per month. The most a landlord would pay, for a property with 100 units or more, is $350 per year.

Rick Giffin, a retiree and former Salinas planning commissioner, lives with his partner and they rent a three-bedroom home for $2,500/month near Cesar Chavez Library. Giffin worries that even the modest fees will mean renters like him have to take up yet another financial burden. “Wages hardly, barely keep up with a family to get by each and every month,” he says.

According to the 2019 American Community Survey, 45 percent of Salinas residents rent their homes; of those, 43 percent spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing.