by Andrew Alonzo | aalonzo@claremont-courier.com

After a nearly six-hour meeting Tuesday, four of the five members of the Claremont City Council weighed in on key decisions aimed at aiding renters.

Council member Ed Reece recused himself from the discussion citing a conflict of interest as a landlord.

The council approved continued funding for the city’s temporary housing stabilization and relocation program, heard a first reading of a new anti-harassment ordinance, and rejected a plan to use city funds for dispute resolution/mediation services. It also passed an “urgency ordinance” to help people displaced by last month’s wildfires in Altadena and Pacific Palisades.

(L-R) Miriam Hernandez, 11, weeping on her mother Lydia Hernandez’s shoulder during Tuesday’s City Council meeting. Courier photo/Andrew Alonzo

The council also voted 2-2, with Reece recused, to reject a motion to establish a rental registry, a database of rental properties that includes landlord and tenant information.

Mayor Corey Calaycay and Council member Sal Medina voted no, saying a registry would lead to rent stabilization — which the state already controls with a 5% to 10% annual cap per Assembly Bill 1482 — and subsequent government oversight of the data.

“That’s the concern, is this still amounts to more bureaucratic effort for a landlord to have to deal with potential cost,” Calaycay said.

“In summary, based on cost estimates received from three reputable vendors, annual rental registry costs for the City of Claremont would range between $60,000 and $87,600 in Year 1 and between 54,180 and $ 83,200 in subsequent years,” according to the staff report.

The yearly salary for a full-time staffer to oversee it would be about $140,000, according to Deputy City Manager Katie Wand.

Vice Mayor Jennifer Stark and Council member Jed Leano voted yes, arguing a rental registry would provide useful data and benefits such as improved housing quality and oversight and potential rental market regulations. Leano also advocated for the council to fund a registry and other programs to help tenants.

“We have a more pending problem this month and this year about people who are going to leave because they can’t afford their rent increases,” Leano said. “And I know that we have rental assistance, I know that the demand for it has gone up, but maybe we’re not doing enough … And I hope we would all be interested in knowing, are we doing enough? And if we’re not doing enough, what else can we do?”

Calls for the council to establish a rental registry have increased since it added exploring the feasibility of such an instrument to its 2024-26 priorities and objectives list in April 2024. Other possible methods of addressing housing instability or displacement were also added at that time, including the potential for anti-harassment language to the city’s just cause eviction ordinance and locating funding for dispute resolution/mediation services.

Several tenants and landlords took to the podium during public comment in the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s meeting. Clerk Shelley Desautels noted the council received 60 written public comments beforehand — 44 of them form letters by Claremont Colleges students in support of tenant protections. Many on both sides delivered their final thoughts Tuesday.

At Tuesday’s City Council meeting, 35-year Claremont resident Michael Boos said recent increases have him spending more than half his income on his $2,075 rent. Courier photo/Andrew Alonzo

Tenants have argued in favor of increased protections and a rental registry as rents have risen over recent years.

Landlords have opposed the plan, saying the data collected would be too invasive of their and their tenant’s privacy. Some said rents have increased due to rising costs of utilities, insurance, property tax, business licenses, property management, and labor.

The council voted unanimously Tuesday to continue to help tenants with direct funding in lieu of the forthcoming LA County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency/Measure A program. The city’s program, which is accepting applications for its second cycle through June 30 or until its $1.6 million budget is exhausted, is meant to subsidize both tenants’ rents and owners’ property improvement costs.

The council voted 3-1, with Calaycay voting no, to introduce the first reading of an anti-harassment ordinance, aimed at deterring tenant harassment from landlords. City staff will conduct outreach with stakeholders in the coming weeks and may update the ordinance prior to its second reading at a future meeting.

“I think when we drafted the ordinance, we tried to base it not so much on subjective, ‘He said, she said’ situations, but actually physical acts that are provable and documentable. That a landlord could look at our list of what’s prohibited, [such as] knowingly lying to a tenant to try to get them to leave, where you could have documentation of that,” said City Attorney Alisha Patterson said.

The council also voted 4-0 to reject funding mediation services offered by a third party.

Finally, the council unanimously approved an urgency ordinance to allow the suspension of some lodging requirements within the hotel/motel ordinance to help people affected by last month’s devastating fires in Altadena and Pacific Palisades relocate to Claremont.

“The proposed Urgency Ordinance would temporarily allow the other hotels/motels in Claremont to rent to individuals and families displaced by the January 2025 wildfires for periods longer than thirty days and would temporarily suspend any other requirements in Chapter 16.101 that are interfering with local hotels and motels renting rooms to guests displaced by the recent fires,” read a city staff report.

The ordinance goes into effect immediately and sunsets on April 9.

The item may be brought back for further discussion should problems arise, or if the state extends Governor Gavin Newsom’s Executive Order N-14-25 which, among other things, allowed people displaced by the fires to remain beyond 30-days as short-term occupants rather than tenants. That order is set to expire March 8.

The Claremont City Council next meeting is at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, February 25 in the council chambers, 225 W. Second St.