As you may recall, Round 1 of the Task Force tackled blighted vacant buildings. Round 2 in nearing an end. The focus this time is the same as in the Brandau-Olivier resolution – the city’s residential rental stock.
Housing activists want a widespread inspection program, funded by landlords and regulated by City Hall. Critics say such a program would be unduly expensive for landlords. The critics say the program would inevitably lead to an unreasonably coercive government bureaucracy beholden to anti-private property activists.
The Brandau-Olivier resolution attempts to put City Hall on a different course than the one advocated by a substantial portion of the Task Force currently finishing its work. ASET/Ombudsman is designed to make the landlord-funded inspection program politically irrelevant.
That’s why I italicized “burdening” earlier. Determining who is to bear the cost of regulating Fresno’s private-sector buildings is going to be controversial for years to come.
Now to the third and final theme to this piece: notice and order.
