By Adam Swift
The city council will take a closer look at how it regulates illegal rooming house violations.
At Monday night’s meeting, the council moved a proposal to potentially put fines for rooming house and certificate of occupancy violations under the city ordinance, rather than the state statute, to its legislative affairs subcommittee. The council also requested that the city solicitor look into the motion to see if the city can legally make the switch.
The motion came out of a discussion the council had with the inspectional services director, building commissioner, and short-term rental office director about how the city can police illegal rooming houses in Revere.
“Rooming houses are very disruptive to the neighborhood, they are very noisy, they draw a lot of people to one house, and they are very loud,” said building commissioner Louis Cavagnaro. “But it is difficult for us to enforce. If we get a complaint, we have to send out letters … it could take six months before we actually get into the house.
“That’s if they let us into the house, if not, we have to get a warrant to get in,” he continued. “Then, once you are in the house, it’s hard to figure out if people are related or not, you can’t ask someone for a document that shows relation. But we do write them up and we do fine them, but from my understanding, if everyone is on the same lease, then that is okay and they are allowed to live there even if they are not related.”
Cavagnaro said the city fines the potential violations under the 21D state statute, which he said has very little enforcement teeth. He said that if the city could once again go back to fining violations under the 40U city ordinance, it would give the city and inspectors more options for enforcing the fines.
Short-term rental office director Vincent Argenzio said that his office has software that identifies ads of people renting out AirBnBs that can also be used to help identify ads for rooming houses.
“I did speak with our software company about changing the parameters to our software to see if we could expand to month-to-month and long-term rentals and see if we could sort and try and find listings that were renting a bedroom or a partial unit to multiple parties,” said Argenzio. “It has been about a week, and we have been able to identify some of them. No one knows how many rooming houses there are in the city, so maybe we are seeing all of them, maybe we are seeing a handful of them.”
After scanning the ads over the past week, Argenzio said his office has identified between 20 to 30 potential illegal rooming houses in the city.
Several councillors spoke of the frustrations they have with the rooming houses and the process that allows the owners to clear out the buildings before they can be property inspected.
Ward 1 Councillor Joanne McKenna said she has had a rooming house next to her residence for years, and that by the time the city can get in to inspect it, the people occupying it have left the house carrying their mattresses.
Ward 5 Councillor Angela Guarino-Sawaya said there have been similar issues in her ward.
Ward 4 Councillor Paul Argenzio suggested that the current system makes it hard to issue fines, and that the city go back to putting the violations under 40U.
Councillor-at-Large Michelle Kelley thanked the city officials for answering questions about the rooming house issue before the council.
“I know that the job you have to do this, it must be frustrating at times because you have some obstacles in front of you that maybe prevent you from doing things the way you might want to do them,” she said. “I am in favor of getting anything in place that would help you do your job more effectively.”
Kelley said she did receive a complaint from a resident from a woman who tried to report an illegal rooming house but was told there was nothing the city could do about it.
Cavagnaro said his office investigates all the complaints that come into it, and that if a resident has a concern, they should call 311 first so that there is a record of the issue.
