MANCHESTER – Township officials are looking to get a bit tougher concerning regulations on rental units as a means of protecting tenant rights.
Mayor Robert Arace told The Manchester Times that “generally we’re looking to get a bit stricter about rentals. Occupancy maximums, occupancy limits, giving Code Enforcement the authority to go back to ensure that before a CO (certificate of occupancy) is issued that everything on a particular check list is met and to go back to make sure there aren’t people exceeding occupancy limits.”
He said there are safety issues and other concerns in given units and he wants to make sure that they are taken care of. The town wants to ensure that landlords are providing a safe environment for tenants to live.
It’s also to make sure that the town’s resources – such as Code Enforcement or police – are not going to the same place on a repeated basis, the mayor added.
He said another ordinance was passed “that will allow us to make a landlord pull out a bond and the township could actually draw down on the bond so they are covering the expenses (if the police are having to go to the same location often).”
Ordinance 23-20 entitled landlord registration will establish a fee and procedure of landlord registration in the township. All landlords within Manchester shall file a landlord registration statement on a form promulgated by the township’s Department of Inspections, Land Use & Planning for each rental property. The registrations are to be filed for each rental unit and the fee shall be $100 for each rental property to be paid yearly.
The ordinance stipulates that any change in occupancy will require the landlord to update tenant information on file with the Department of Inspections and Land Use & Planning within 20 days of the change and obtain a new rental CO.
Any individual person, group, association, partnership, business or corporation will be subject to a fine not less than $100 and not more than $500 and/or a term of imprisonment for not more than 30 days and/or 90 days community service for each day each dwelling unit is occupied without a CO.
All inspections for a rental housing CO will be conducted by the township’s Building Inspector or a designee. A dwelling unit is defined as a single unit providing complete, independent living facilities for one or more persons, including permanent provisions for living, sleeping, eating, cooking and sanitation.
Plaza Revitalization
Mayor Arace shared that another action that would require consideration for Council review is a plaza revitalization program. Facilities such as the one in Whiting Town Center and Crestwood Village Plaza would fall under that.
“Brick Township has a revitalization program that they just extended that waive certain fees for units less than 5,000 feet and that have been empty for a year and I think around 30 businesses in Brick have taken advantage of that program. This is something that the Council will potentially consider to put together some program similar in Manchester Township so if we can stimulate growth in those plazas and fill those empty units,” Mayor Arace added.
Veterans Services
During the most recent council meeting, Mayor Arace announced, “there will be an Ocean County Veterans (Department worker) in Whiting three days a week…we want them to primarily focus on pensions, benefits for veterans and also survivors such as spouses for those benefits.”
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