“It’s very enlightening that they value the class position of a landlord over the class position of a tenant,” said Brunswick resident Peach Cushing of the Brunswick Renters Organization a few days after Town Council shot down the adoption of an ordinance change to the town’s rental registry.

Some councilors had cited that they wanted to here from more Landlords to workshop the potential changes. “I think that’s been my fear. I think that’s what put us in the housing crisis – is the culmination of those attitudes on Council, the state government and a national government. While it’s not surprising, it is frustrating. Incredibly frustrating.”

Town Council voted 7-2 on Monday night to send a rental registry ordinance amendment, one that aimed to collect and make publicly available rental data within the town, back to the Housing Committee that approved it. The changes would have increased safety protocols, according to the Fire Department, but the proposed annual fee of $50 per rental unit, which drew pushback from many landlords. They argued that such an annual fee would prompt them to increase rents, especially in cases where property owners have multiple units to register each year.

The lengthy public hearing drew debate as Landlords — some of whom were not Brunswick residents, hailing as far as from Portland, Biddeford or Boston — slammed the rising costs of owning rental properties and how adding a fee for registration would negatively impact their business. Tenant advocates argued that with the amount of rent that they pay per month, a $50 dollar fee is worth it to protect renters and gather valuable housing data.

“We house a lot of different people,” said Dave Holman at the Monday night meeting. Holman, a major property owner in town — and owner of the newly built, eco-home known as the Sandpiper building — noted that teachers, refugees and formerly unhoused people are among the many types of tenants in his units. He said a lot of those rental rates need to remain low. Though he is not against the measure as a whole, he said more workshopping is needed.

Some pointed out that just the fee alone might be less than 3% of one month’s rent, given what renters are charged in the area. Redfin and Apartments.com place the median and average rent at $1,450, while Zillow puts median rent at $2,150.

Tenants, including Cushing, said they saw the proposed ordinance change as a positive step and questioned why landlords would see the fee as a significant hurdle. Cushing said that BRO was frustrated that the vote did not favor the proposed changes.

“I just don’t know how many more landlords they want to hear from, because they didn’t mention that they wanted to hear from more tenants, which I find pretty enlightening as well,” Cushing said.”…If they really wanted a full complete picture of the situation, they should be reaching out to tenants.”

Six months in the process, with more to go

“I think it’s good all around,” Director of Economic Development Sally Costello said at the meeting, prior to the vote to send the issue back to the committee. She noted that the goal was to get the registry update running by July 2025, which would be the start of the town’s new fiscal year. “We’ve tried to set it up so it’s not punitive to either side.”

Costello said at the meeting that many stakeholders, including the Brunswick Renters Organization and local landlords, were involved in the now six-month process to revise the ordinance, which was created many years ago and has just not been used.

The proposed changes, including the contentious registration fee, aim to increase safety measures in the rental pool and provide much-needed data for the town to address the housing shortage, said At-Large Councilor Nathan MacDonald, who voted in favor of the measure and is also a Brunswick renter.

Deputy Fire Chief Josh Shean said that the Fire Department would implement the program, as it will carry out inspections of rental buildings that the ordinance change would have enforced. The goal is to have landlords provide basic data such as contact information for property managers, owners and so on to fill gaps in emergency communication, especially if owners do not live on-site or even in Brunswick. He said that owners and property managers can be entered into the registry once it’s up and running and that property owners can identify a primary contact for the building.

The goal, Shean said, is to have two inspectors conduct about 400 building inspections a year — though he noted that a new process would not require inspection of each unit, of which there are an estimated 3,000. He noted that there is an estimate of 680 buildings total in Brunswick.

The push to table the item until it was workshopped further drew criticism from tenants rights advocates, who saw the proposal as necessary for maintaining safe housing in the area. MacDonald also pointed out that the process to draft the changes did not favor any particular side. He said a vote to delay the work would actually limit progress and overburden staff who already spent months drafting the changes.

“This is an ordinance of compromise,” MacDonald said, noting that proposals from renters advocates and landlords were thrown out during the process of drafting the changes.

He also questioned why landlords should be exempt from registration fees, when other types of businesses in town pay annual registration fees higher than $50 dollars a year. Landlords should contribute their fair share for safe housing in the town, he said.

District 5 Councilor Jennifer Hicks was one of several councilors who pushed back against the ordinance as proposed, stating that she believed more feedback was needed from landlords, and claimed that the business of providing housing was “different” than other businesses regulated by a fee structure since it is an essential service.

Council Chairperson Abby King, who was in favor of adopting the measure that night, said that the council has received a number of emails from both sides of the issue and noted that there was a lot of misinformation going around. She emphasized that the ordinance change was not a debate of whether or not to adopt rental registry — there is already a rental registry ordinance in place — and that this was not a measure that would create rent control.

Costello said that the proposed $50 unit fee was a method of paying for a staff position to successfully implement the program. Costello said that the cost of salary and benefits, which is around $100,000, would ideally be paid for through registration fees.

There were several suggestions made by Councilors and public commenters alike to address the fee – some suggested lowering it, others pushed for it to be rid of altogether. Some suggested at the meeting to use budget funding to pay for the position – which would source from tax funding. Cushing slammed the latter sentiment, arguing that it would be “punitive” to the entire Brunswick population to have residents pay for out-of-town landlords to safely run their rental properties in town.

Another sticking point for councilors and landlords was the proposed overdue charge of $15 each day of past due registration payment. If implemented, units would accrue about $450 a month if the fee remained unpaid. Costello said the reason for the late fee was to motivate landlords to hop on board the new system, though she noted it could be discussed prior to the vote.

With an estimate of 3,000 units in the town, the estimated fund generated from just the $50 fee per unit would be $150,000. If landlords were to have tenants eat the cost, a $50 fee on one unit for a year would cost an additional $4.17 a month.

The rental registry changes will be revisited at a later date.