Rental Housing

For all the complaints about rental housing in the city, it appears that very few people want to actually put in the work to redo rental regulation. If no renters want to get involved, they can expect to either see things stay the same or change in favor of the landlords who do want to get involved. After all, it is the landlords whose "ox will get gored" should any changes get put into play as they would be the ones most likely to be affected negatively, so it is only reasonable to expect them to to take action to mitigate what they would perceive as harmful outcomes. Press release from the city:

Alert Sent On: 01/16/2025 04:45:18 PM CST

 At the February 13, 2024, City Council meeting, the Carbondale City Council held a public hearing concerning changes to how the City would regulate rental housing. This included changes to regulate the relationship between landlords and tenants and a new rental housing licensing program. Following this meeting, the City Council voted on March 26, 2024, to establish a working committee to discuss and draft a new rental housing ordinance. 

Multiple attempts were made to fill this committee, but the City only received a few letters of interest in being placed on the committee. After the final attempt to get landlords and tenants and other community members involved in the committee, it was determined to move forward with a Staff-developed rewrite of Title 4, Chapter 4 to address the concerns of the City Council as it relates to rental housing and landlord-tenant relationships. 

At this time to respect the time and efforts of those who have applied, the City Attorney’s office will be reaching out to the individuals whose applications were received throughout this process. A calendar invite will be sent to coordinate dates that these individuals can meet to discuss this ordinance. Following that, two open sessions will be held that the public may attend. All dates and times TBD.  

If you previously applied and do not receive an invite to the stakeholders meeting by 5 PM January 22, please forward the original email you sent with your application you to cityattorney@carondaleil.gov 

If you wish to receive e-mail updates on the dates and times of the meetings related to the changes to landlord and tenant ordinances, please contact the City Attorney’s office at cityattorney@carbondaleil.gov.  

For further info contact the City Attorney’s Office at 618-457-3215.  

South Illinois

 For whatever reason, most of the storefronts north of College Street are filled with one form of business or another. It is the ones south of College down to Grand that have problems, especially the strips of storefronts behind Geologic Oddities and Trax. If your storefront sits empty for that long, it may be time to take a look at the rent you are charging and include some things in the rent that you normally would not. Triple net is great if you have renters clamoring for your space but makes it harder to rent the space to prospective tenants.

Rental Committee

 The city is looking for people to serve on a committee to research rental unit housing license planning committee . Looks like there will be 13 people on this committee which is probably about 6 people too many. Here is information if you are interested in serving:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CARBONDALE -

The City of Carbondale is researching rental housing unit licensing. This will be a substantial and important update to the current rental housing regulations. As part of this process, the City Council has directed staff to solicit for interested parties who wish to serve on a rental housing licensing planning committee. If you have a desire in serving on this important committee, please submit a written letter of interest via email to Mayor Carolin Harvey charvey@explorecarbondale.com . Your letter must include your name, address of current residence, reason for interest in the committee, and a detailed description of your background or resume. All inquiries will be confidential until the appointments are made. All letters of interest shall be submitted by June 4, 2024. 

The Rental Housing Licensing Committee will be comprised of the following community members: 

- 4 landlords 

- 4 Carbondale tenants (at least one of whom shall be a full time SIUC undergraduate currently living off campus) 

- One at large citizen. 

These committee members will serve with two Carbondale City Councilpersons and two City staff employees. 

For further information and questions contact the Community Development Manager at 618-457-3251.

Rental Map

 Here is the link to a map that has been floating around the internet showing all of the rental properties available in Carbondale. The Fishers, AKA Home Rentals, look to have the largest number of properties in the area bounded by West Main on the north and Mill Street on the South with University and Oakland as the eastern and western boundaries respectively. If I recall correctly, approximately 70% of Carbondale is rental property.

Empty Rentals

Article in Sunday's Southern looked at the state of rentals in the city. With 70% of housing in Carbondale in rental property, an estimated 30% of that remaining empty is pretty disheartening. A lot of them are up for sale too. A three building complex on East Grand sold for just over $1.5 million last July, Home Rentals appears to have over $9 million in properties listed for sale as a group and the owners of The Quadrangle complex have listed it for $2.6 million

The problem, of course, is that most of these properties were built for a time when the student population at SIUC hit over 24,000. Currently , there are only about 11,700 students enrolled this fall. From what I have heard, the new Evolve building in downtown has never managed more than a 60% occupancy rate and there are rumors of at least 2 more apartment complexes planned for the south side of town in the next couple of years.

For Rent Signs

Seeing  quite a few For Rent and For Sale signs in the Arbor District and areas close to S. Illinois and S. University, even in front of  houses that I have never seen a For Rent sign in front of before. There are a couple of houses on West Cherry right around the corner from Dairy Queen that I have never seen with a For Rent sign. Given the amount of new rental property that has come into Carbondale on the south side of town and at Evolve, coupled with the decline of the student population, I guess I should not be surprised that students are opting for new properties instead of 50+ year old houses into which the landlords put minimal money to maintain.

Rent College Pads

Been seeing a lot of these Rent College Pads signs around town. Apparently it is an online search engine for students looking for rentals in over 100 university towns across the nation. Info about the communities for each college is provided on the search page but is pretty sketchy and apparently not updated frequently. In case you are coming to Carbondale, be aware that Fujiyama Japanese Steakhouse is not within walking distance of campus and Social House's location is now occupied by Gold Diggers

For Rent Signs

In another sign of the declining student population, I have seen farm more "For Rent" signs around town that in past semesters. Usually, retail properties are gone or the landlords have given up this late in the semester but the same signed have been out in front of a number of properties since December. For the first time that I recall, there are For Rent signs in the yard in all three of the four-square style houses in the 200 block of West Walnut. I have seen 1 sign there int he past but never signs in the yards of all three at the same time.

Ownership in Carbondale

Was listening to WSIU this evening and caught a few interesting housing  facts:

1. Though the city has a program offering $5000 to anyone converting a rental unit to single family housing, approximately 1200 single family units converted to rental properties in the past few years.

2. Jackson County ranks among the top 15% in the country in ratio of property taxes to median income. We are high, primarily because of the amount of property  owned by SIUC,which is exempt from property taxes.

3. Roughly 75% of Carbondale property is rental, significantly higher than other college communities in the state of Illinois.

Meeting at 1st Methodist Church Saturday morning from 9:30 a.m. to noon to discuss Carbondale housing.

City Employee Residence

The Southern provided this handy graph showing where Carbondale city employees live. Just over half reside in Carbondale, while a little less than half live in Murphysboro, Carterville and DeSoto, all of which conveniently fall within the 9 mile limit for residences and all of which have cheaper housing, and more available for purchase, than does Carbondale.

In case you have forgotten, over 70% of the housing in Carbondale is rental property, meaning that many who want to own a home have to go outside the city limits in order to find one.

Empty Retail Space

Going to be interesting to see what will happen to all of the existing empty retail space in the area surrounding the Evolve/Carbondale Flats complex. A good half of the storefronts located just north of the building are empty. If businesspeople had high expectations for those locations, I would expect to see someone renting them now in order to get ready to take advantage of the influx of students coming in next door. Instead, nothing.

One problem I have heard is that the landlords ask for higher rents than the space justifies and would rather leave it sit empty than fill it with a tenant that pays less than what they perceive as market rate.

Apartment Oversupply

According to this article from the Southern,  Carbondale is seeing roughly a 5% vacancy rate in apartments in town.  I am rather surprised it is not closer to 90%, given the amount of building that has taken place in town over the last few years and the continual slide in enrollment.

I would hazard a guess that the figures ignore the number of retail houses in the area north of West Main and around South Poplar. From what I have heard, students have chosen to abandon a lot of those older properties which landlords have only minimally maintained, preferring to move to brand new properties like the Reserve at Saluki Pointe and G & R Rentals.  In addition, there are the properties that were/are owned by Campus Habitat, which as far as I know are still closed by order of the city, taking a large number of rooms and apartments out of the rental pool.

Rental Program Inspection Meeting

Each of the city inspectors visits between 2 and 3 units a day and spends about 15-30 minutes on the actual inspection. Last time I checked, the city is inspecting between 250 to 300 units a month.

From a press release sent out by the city:

The City of Carbondale Development Services Department will hold an informational meeting focusing on the Mandatory Rental Housing Inspection Program on WEDNESDAY, April 28, 2010, at 3:00 p.m. in the Carbondale Civic Center. Owners and managers of rental residential properties in Carbondale are encouraged to attend the informational meeting. The meeting will cover a number of topics pertinent to the inspection program and maintenance of the housing stock in Carbondale including the process of registering rental properties, housing code standards, common code violations and safety issues, landlord and tenant responsibilities and programs available to enhance residential neighborhoods.

Mike Pierceall, Development Services Director stated, “The primary objective of the inspection program is to ensure the safety of the occupants of rental properties in the community. This informational meeting provides the opportunity for City staff to interact with rental property owners and to identify ways to work collectively to improve the housing conditions in Carbondale. The City has held similar meetings over the past two years that were widely attended and addressed a number of issues regarding the rental inspection program and overall property maintenance. We see this as a continuation of that effort.”

The City of Carbondale requires owners of residential rental properties located within the corporate limits of Carbondale to register the rental properties with the Building and Neighborhood Services Division on an annual basis. Detailed inspections are conducted on the exterior and interior of rental properties every three years to ensure compliance with health, safety and housing code standards. Inspections are also initiated on a complaint basis or when violations are suspected by City Building and Neighborhood Services Division staff.

For further information on the meeting and the Mandatory Rental Housing Inspection Program contact the City of Carbondale Building & Neighborhood Services Division at 457-3237.

Rental Inspection Figures

Haven't heard much about how the rental inspection program is going so sent a FOI request to City Clerk Janet Vaught to see the reports for Sept. since I thought there's be 30 or so. Got an email back from her asking if I really wanted to see them all. From the tone of the email, I got the feeling there woudl be more than just 30, so changed my question to ask for the number of inspections for the past three months and turns out I was right. Courtesy of Stephen Phillips, Inspector Supervisor, Building and Neighborhood Services:

August--181
September--219
October--266

Planning Commission Meeting

Sat in on last night's Planning Commission meeting, which had only one item on the agenda: a vote on a text amendment requiring the removal of certain non-conforming mobile homes from their current sites. If I recall correctly, there are 21 mobile homes that would be affected if the amendment is adopted. The majority of the structures are in violation because they are located next to or behind houses in areas not zoned for multiple residents on a property. These were put in during the housing shortage of the late 60s, prior to the adoption of the zoning ordinance in the mid-70s and were grandfathered in. However this does make them 35-40 years and most mobile homes don't bear the ravages to time well.

Notices of the meeting had gone out to owners of the affected buildings and about 10 people showed up to speak. One woman spoke in favor of the ordinance, since she lived across the street from one of the homes. She said she had been told by Councilman Chris Wissmannn the structure would be moved, but instead new tenants had moved into it. she hope the new amendment would cause the owner to move it as she viewed it as a blight on the neighborhood.

The other attendees all spoke against the amendment. Most appeared to be landlords or their representatives, arguing that the amendment would imposed undue economic hardship on them, as they would lose the rental income from the property until they could relocate it and would have to bear the costs of moving the buildings. They also advanced the argument that the amendment represented an unfair taking of their property by the city without compensation and asked if the city was prepared to compensate them for the costs of moving or loss of rental income.

The only other argument offered was from one woman whose son had lived in the mobile home behind her house for 22 years with a tree growing up over it, making it impossible to move the home without cutting down the tree.

After listening to everyone's statements, three or four times in some cases, the commission voted 4-2, with one abstention by a member who had a financial interest in rental properties in the city, to approve the amendment and pass it along to the city council for a vote at the next meeting.

Rental Safety

From what I understand, the apartment where this took place is located in a house that has been subdivided into several apartments. However, there is no key for the tenants to lock the main door so anyone who wants to can wander in at all hours of the day or night. After the robbery, the tenants asked the landlord to install a keyed lock on the main door but the landlord refused. Apparently, the only option now is for the tenants to file a formal request for inspection with the city. You'd think your landlord would want to make his tenants feel safe in his properties.

Inspections

I'd been meaning to contact Tom Grant to see how the rental property inspections were going. Now I don't have to. Thanks DE.