Q&A with the Fort Collins U+2 city inspector
Dale Wood is the city occupancy inspector for Fort Collins. He, among a few select coworkers, enforce the city housing occupancy ordinance, commonly known as “U+2.”
In the spring of 2016, the Colorado State University’s student government, ASCSU, attempted a petition to change the law. The petition failed, due to lack of signatures.
In January of 2016, the city of Fort Collins began actively enforcing the ordinance in a small, half-mile area west of campus.
The following Q&A is an excerpt from an interview with Wood, discussing the Avery Park enforcement and how enforcement for the ordinance is carried out.
Erin: So, are you the one who actively enforces U+2 in Avery park?
Wood: Yes, I’ve been the primary investigator with the city for the past six years. When the case load gets heavy one of my peers from the other offices can step up and help me. But, I am the primary person.
Erin: So what does enforcement look like? It used to be, if neighbors make a complaint then you check up on the house.
Wood: Correct. And that is city wide, so if we get a complaint, the city is committed to investigate any complaint that we get, anonymous or otherwise. We prefer the complaints to not be anonymous because it’s easier for me to have follow up with the reporting party if I know who they are. But, we investigate every complaint.
We have a little bit different of a component in the Avery Park area. This is basically due to their request for assistance in that area. And, when we analyzed the numbers of the calls there compared to the rest of the city, it pretty much just reinforced what we already knew — that it was disproportionately high.
So, the Avery park area is about one half of one-square mile. The boundaries are Elizabeth, Shields, Prospect (and) Taft. (It’s) not a very big component of this city — the city is about 55 square miles. That one half-square mile accounts for about 25 percent of the complaints pertaining to occupancy that we get. So, based upon these factors, the city decided to … see if a proactive component would have any impact on that area.
There’s probably a misnomer that we’re going down every street every day looking for violations. That’s not the case at all. There’s not the man power or the resources to do that.
We have good records from the times this program started — we know every property that’s been investigated or found in violation. Every property that has been a repeat offender. And, there are a lot of properties that have been repeat offenders. So, we actively keep an eye on the properties that within the last two years had a complaint. The focus is to try and address those locations.
Erin: So why do you think those locations have repeated violations even though they have different tenants? Is it a result of the house? The owner?
Wood: We find that not many owners are in any sort of collaboration with the tenants. That’s rare, to see that, where they all agree that they over occupy and they don’t care, just pay the rent.
That being said, we know that an indifference occurs, where a property is rented to three people and the person responsible for the property pretty much just turns a blind eye (to the fourth person).
So, I think you could say that the individuals would have plausible deniability. If they don’t know what’s going on, they don’t know. If you make yourself not aware, intentionally, by never checking up on your property, then you don’t know what’s going on.
So, that being said, a fair number of these repeat violating properties could fall into that category.
Erin: As a result of the owner not actively checking up on them?
Wood: Yeah, you collect your rent at the first of the month and then don’t do any self policing. The city doesn’t want to police these properties. There’s an expectation that property owners will actively police their own properties.
So, that’s the primary focus of this proactive component in Avery Park. What we do, is similar to a (trash) ordinance in Fort Collins.
We don’t actively enforce (the) trash can (ordinance) because the violations are so prevalent. They’re not supposed to be visible from public right of way. When you drive down a street you’re not supposed to see them. The way the city responds to complaints, is if we get a complaint, say on the 1400th block, it’s not reasonable to just address that complaint when you just drove by half a dozen others to get to the complaint.
So my example is if we get a complaint, the inspectors will look at the entire block and address all the complaints they see. It’s the same kind of scenario — if we get a complaint on a block, we passively look to see if there are any signs of over occupancy on the same block.
So, they are enforcing by semester for this?
Wood: Well, it just makes sense. At the end of the semester, everybody leaves. I mean I see where you’re going with this, this is not student related. This is because the call load is so heavy over there. And, you look at the statistics and when the school year ends, the call load goes down.
Erin: Okay. Could you clarify the law for readers? Say that I own a house, and it has five bedrooms, can I have five people? If I own it.
Wood: Here’s what the actual ordinance says: A family, of any size or makeup, can occupy a single family dwelling plus one additional person. Family plus one.
In the second part of the ordinance, it says one adult, their dependents, a second adult, their dependents, and one additional person. So, the three unrelated, you take the dependency out. But, the ordinance is written for families.
So, you have the boyfriend with kids, girlfriend with kids, they can live together as a blended family and have one additional person.
What I see several times a year, is the parents of the student buy a property, and the student occupies the property with several others. In that scenario, you can still only have three (unrelated adults).
Another fairly common problem is siblings. Because of the three unrelated acronym, there’s a false sense that because two may be related, you can still have another two. I’ve run into this fairly often. Two brothers are a family, so they can only have one additional person.
Here’s another situation that we have — boyfriend and girlfriend relationships. The ordinance says anyone who stays more than 30 nights in any 12 month period is considered an occupant. If you have a relationship where your boyfriend or girlfriend stays over every Friday and Saturday night when you don’t have school, from the start of the school year to mid November, you’ve pretty much used up your 30 days.
Erin: So it’s not continuous?
Wood: No, not continuous. Just any 30 days over a 12-month period.
Erin: Oh, wow. That’s a bit (of a gray area).
Wood: Yeah, you’re seeing the problem there. When we run into that, we ask the owner to take the responsibility and manage that. We put the burden back on (the tenants). It might mean going to the other house to spend time together.
Erin: So, you don’t actively enforce all of Fort Collins. One because you don’t have the resources and two because most of the complaints come from Avery Park…
Wood: Well, disproportionately higher.
Erin: Okay, so two because they are disproportionately high. So I guess my question is, why is the city allowed to do that? To enforce one specific area? It seems to me that if you’re going to enforce one area you should enforce another area as well. Could you explain that?
Wood: I’ll try to. My background is law enforcement, so that’s how I think. Resources on a government level are limited because nobody wants to pay an extraordinarily large amount of taxes.
So, the services that the government offers pretty much meets the needs of the community where you are. If we were to do this type of enforcement city wide, you would need probably 5 or 6 of me.
So, you have to weigh the cost against the return on investment. Since we don’t get this type of a call load on the east side of I-25, it wouldn’t make sense to put the resources over there, because the need just doesn’t exist.
Erin: Are they looking at expanding it (the avery park program)?
Wood: That’s a possibility.
Erin: And they would have to hire more investigators?
Wood: That’s the only way it could be done if this program were to expand.
Erin: Do you know why they decided to this program now? What came up that (city council) decided, ‘We need to do this now?’
Avery Park has asked for assistance for several years.
The higher the density of people, the more potential for problems. So, that’s the purpose of the ordinance.
Dale Wood is the city occupancy inspector for Fort Collins. He, among a few select coworkers, enforce the city housing occupancy ordinance, commonly known as “U+2.”
Erin Douglas is a junior at Colorado State University pursuing two degrees in journalism and economics. Read more of her articles at collegian.com where she works as the Collegian news editor.
