Provo tightens rental laws

PROVO — Sleuthing may become standard practice to determine how many renters live in a home in violation of Provo rental ordinances.

The City Council recently clarified the definition of an owner in areas zoned S for students and A for accessory apartments. Owners may rent their basement apartments in those overlay areas, but they must also live there.

The new definition requires the owner to prove it by producing such documents as mortgage and tax records or a driver's license.

The student overlay allows four students in a basement apartment if the owner lives upstairs. It generally runs from 800 North to 500 North and from University Avenue to 900 East next to Brigham Young University.

The accessory apartment overlay allows a couple with children to live in the basement apartment, as long as the owner also lives on the premises. It lies more in central Provo.

The "tree streets," a 50-year-old residential area with streets named after trees east of 900 East is a mix of A and S and the impetus for beefing up the ordinance, council Chairwoman Cynthia Dayton said.

However, enforcement has been difficult. Some owners ignore the ordinance and pack as many people in a house as they can, often without living there themselves.

Previously, if a zoning officer came to the door and asked if the person living there was the owner, the official would have to accept whatever answer was given, Councilman David Acheson said. The new ordinance is more easily enforceable to catch rental cheats.

Additionally, the council changed the terminology of a basement apartment. It's no longer called a dwelling unit. Instead it's defined as an "accessory apartment."

Physical evidence, such as homes that are rundown, numerous cars parked there, including on the lawn, or even reports from neighbors, tip off zoning officials that more than just a family lives in a particular home.

"It's a misconception that we're closing down opportunity," Dayton said.

However, the new teeth could take a bite out of family interests. The changes prevent an owner from moving out of a house while retaining the benefits of home ownership, including tax deductions from continuing to make the mortgage payments, by quit-claiming someone else on the deed — including an owner's children. That circumvents the law, Acheson said.

An owner has to have a financial interest and an obligation to care for the home, he said. If he wants his children to live there without him, they must also have a financial interest.

Several residents said the council was going too far in limiting their property rights. Another said he hired an attorney to keep city "spies" from entering the home he owns to determine if the occupancy met the code.