E.L. City Council discusses rental licenses, overlay district

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Editor’s note: This story was changed to reflect that the East Lansing City Council did not approve the overlay district ordinace for the Glencairn neighborhood. The ordinance was deferred to a later date.

Seven local properties are now licensed rental properties and a request to add additional properties to an overlay district was deferred at the East Lansing City Council’s Tuesday night meeting at the 54-B District Court.

The Glencairn Neighborhood Association submitted 127 valid signatures to the council to approve the request to add 202 land parcels to the current overlay district. The new borders for the overlay district would expand to Sunset Lane on the eastern boundary, to Southlawn Avenue for the northern boundary, to Harrison Road for the southern boundary and to Grand River Avenue for the western boundary, which includes a public alley north of Oakhill Avenue.

Overlay districts are designated areas preventing more rental applications for homes in the boundaries of the district.

City Council referred the item to the Planning Commission and it will be scheduled for a required public hearing at a future meeting.

By deferring a decision on the ordinance, an application for a rental property in the proposed addition will be placed on hold until a decision is made, Mayor Pro Tem Diane Goddeeris said. The decision to prevent residents from renting out their property and relieving difficult financial situations was not easy, she said.

“There isn’t one person on this council that doesn’t understand the terrible position these homeowners are in,” Goddeeris said.

Although the issue is troubling, it is not unique and the same action as preventing a new rental with the passage of a neighborhood association movements for increased overlay districts, Councilmember Nathan Triplett said.

“We have an obligation to treat those who are similarly situated similarly,” he said. “We are bound by our past practice.”

The seven properties approved to begin rental or continue rental with a changed class of license were approved unanimously by the council.

An eighth property up for debate was deferred to the council’s Oct. 5 meeting.

The request for a Class III rental license, filed by property owner Jay Gupta, has been in process for over a year because the failure of the owner to appear at housing commission hearings and unsolved issues on the property.

Signs of foundation settlement as well as a potential sewer line break have been presented to the property as needing to be addressed before the property’s rental license can be approved, said Howard Ash, East Lansing’s director of code compliance.

“In over a year, neither of those things were completed,” he said.

There has been no sign of progress in dealing with the foundation’s settlement, Ash said.
“Anything that may have been done has been hidden by having dirt and mulch piled up around the edge of the foundation,” he said.

Although Gupta failed to appear at two consecutive housing commission meetings and has not provided documentation regarding the foundation and sewer work, he said the improvements are complete.

“I have spent a lot of money beautifying the place,” Gupta said. “I had a power snake to cut everything out of the sewer. It is clean. It works.”

The decision regarding the rental license for the property needs to be resolved as soon as possible but also account for the due process of the owner, Assistant City Attorney Thomas Hitch said.

“We’re trying to be as accommodating as we can within the restrictions and ordinances of the law,” he said. “We need to have this brought to a head one way or the other.”

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