Substandard rental properties are a significant problem in , creating visual blight and potential health risks for neighborhoods as well as lowering property values. Dangerous dogs also are a detriment to neighborhoods, presenting safety risks to both residents and their pets.
The City Council should take steps at its meeting at 7 tonight to crack down on subpar rental properties and violent dogs. The council should vote to expand the city's apartment inspection ordinance to include registration and inspection for all multifamily rental properties of three units or more. The current ordinance only covers eight units or more.
The council also should require registration for one- and two-family rental units found to have code violations. Registration fees are proposed to be raised to $24 for the first rental unit and $8 for each additional unit. Those are reasonable fees, and if they are not charged, increased funding probably would be required from the city's general fund budget, with taxpayers in general footing the bill.
The expanded registration and inspection program would help ensure better-maintained properties and improved living conditions for tenants. It also would establish a stronger database that would give the city a greater ability to locate owners of substandard properties.
Better-maintained rental housing would help boost property values and expand the city's tax base. Under the proposed changes to the current ordinance governing dangerous dogs, the definition would be expanded to include unprovoked actions not only against humans but also against other animals. This would allow for more aggressive enforcement of cases in which a pet being walked on a leash is attacked by a free-roaming dog.
Under the ordinance changes, the owner of a dog deemed dangerous would have only 15 days, rather than 30, to comply with the requirements for owning a dangerous dog. The owner also would have to pay a $50 annual registration fee. A microchip would be implanted in the animal, and the microchip information would be part of a national registry.
The ordinance changes also would enable swifter seizure of a dangerous dog by city animal control officers. The expanded program for inspection of rental units and stronger animal regulations would contribute to a higher quality of life in Fort Worth neighborhoods. That's an overarching goal for which that the city and its residents continually should be striving.
Source: Star-Telegram