Tenants’ lawyers: St. Paul rent control process ignores maintenance problems

A ground floor window that won’t close. A back stair that wobbles too much for comfort. Cracks in the walls that grow every year. Mold in the basement laundry room.

Jessica Skaare has been watching these problems pile up at her apartment in St. Paul’s Summit-University neighborhood for almost a decade.

When the rent was low, they were just the kinds of things that came with the territory. But now her landlord is seeking permission to raise her rent by more than 25% to make those long-needed repairs on the building. The sudden increase is more than Skaare, a social worker, can comfortably afford — and well beyond the 3% limit that is supposed to apply to older buildings subject to rent control.

This is the other side of St. Paul’s controversial rent stabilization ordinance. While public debate for the last two years has focused on how to kick-start new construction by exempting newer buildings from rent control, landlords who own older buildings, which are supposed to be ruled by rent control, are routinely given exemptions.

Skaare’s neighbors are worried about rising rent, too. While he’s paying $875 per month for his two-bedroom unit in the desirable neighborhood, Vincent Cornell, a roofer, has been able to stomach the conditions in his basement home. The holes in the wood floor he has covered with duct tape. The rotting window frames. The mold on the wall outside his children’s bedroom.

But now, squeezed between poor conditions and a rent increase of hundreds of dollars per month with no guarantee the problems will be fixed, Cornell is also looking for a new place.

Almost every week, a hearing room in St. Paul’s City Hall sees tenants like Cornell and Skaare asking the city to stop landlords from raising rent on deteriorating apartments.

In these hearings, renters often note mold, electrical problems, cracking walls and crumbling foundations.

Landlords counter that their costs are rising.

St. Paul almost always grants requests for rent increases, said Abbie Hanson, an attorney with the Housing Justice Center who has represented many tenants in St. Paul.

From there, it’s up to tenants to appeal. They have to file paperwork, pay a fee, attend a hearing on a weekday afternoon, and then wait months for a finding.

Older buildings are supposed to be subject to the 3% limit on rent increases, meant to keep those apartments affordable for St. Paulites of modest means.

Still, St. Paul grants thousands of rent increases every year above the 3% cap.

City data shows that just a handful of large landlords are responsible for the vast majority of those rent hikes, but property owners who control just a few buildings also appeal to the city to raise rents above the 3% cap.

Hanson and her colleagues are working on cases probing the intersection of St. Paul’s rent stabilization ordinance and its guarantees of a reasonable profit for landlords, and a decades-old state law requiring rental apartments meet some minimum safety standards, know as “habitability.”

In another case where a landlord was granted a rent increase, renters could not adequately heat their apartments. Hanson and the tenants appealed the ruling to the state Court of Appeals.

St. Paul officials cited that lawsuit in declining to comment on rent stabilization appeals in general.

“The ordinance uses that as a barometer that landlords have to meet to quality for a rent increase,” Hanson said. But too often, she said, St. Paul grants rent increases to landlords who have not maintained their buildings to those standards.

St. Paul’s rent control ordinance is supposed to use the state habitability standard as a consideration when deciding whether a landlord can raise rent above the 3% cap.