LYNN — Condominium owners in Lynn might have noticed a less-than-pleasant surprise in the mail last week, as the Inspectional Services Department issued 300 dollar fines to rental condo owners who failed to register their properties to the city.
On Aug. 22, rental property owners in Lynn who had not registered their properties with the city’s online database were issued a warning. A letter sent to Lynn landlords, citing a 2020 city ordinance, warned that if they failed to register their properties within seven days, they would be fined at a rate of 300 dollars a day.
“Be advised that your registration is past due and you have seven (7) days from the date of this correspondence to register these rental units. Failure to provide this information as directed may result in an assessment of a fine of three hundred dollars ($300.00) per day per unit and continuing for each subsequent day thereafter. Each day shall be considered a separate offense,” The letter read. “By Ordinance dated 9/29/20, the City of Lynn requires that all owners of private residential rental housing units, including condominium units, to register these rental units no later than July 1st of each year with the Inspectional Services Department. All rental registration units are recorded in an electronic database of all owners.”
The letter also states that owner-occupied properties are exempt from registration, but that homeowners must instead file a Homeowner’s Affidavit with the City of Lynn.
Allison Burns is an attorney from the Casey Lundregan Burns law firm, based in Boston and Salem. She said that her client, Property Manager of East Coast Properties, LLC Cyndy Anselmo thinks the notice places an unfair burden on elderly live-in property owners who are forced to prove their own occupancy with the affidavit.
“She [Anselmo] said they [The City of Lynn] keep referencing this ordinance that requires landlords to register their rental units, she said, and no one is understanding that these elderly people living in the units that they owned, shouldn’t have to register their units because they’ve never rented them,” Burns said. “The affidavit requires them to pull a copy of their own deed, which is really difficult for elderly people to do and readily accessible to the City of Lynn itself. And then they also needed to pull a bill that wasn’t a real estate tax bill or a water and sewer bill that showed their ownership and occupancy of the property, which is, I think, a huge burden on people who are not renting their units and should not be subject to this ordinance at all.”
Lynn’s Chief of Inspectional Services, Michael Donovan, said that he thinks the fine is completely fair, and a necessary measure for ensuring that landlords maintain their properties to the city’s safety and hygiene standards. He said that after three warning letters, property owners who occupy their units have been given enough time to notify the city and avoid wrongful fines.
“Letters were sent out a year ago to people without any threats and fines. People didn’t respond. My understanding is that another letter was sent out, and still no response. This third letter went out to people, asking people to please confirm, and let us know if you’re an owner occupied unit. If so, that’s that you’re done, we don’t talk to you ever again, there’s no charge, just let us know,” Donovan said. “Any code or ordinance has the ability to issue fines for non conformance … I don’t think there’s anybody in the city that can tell me that it’s unfair or inappropriate to inspect the rental unit once every five years to make sure it meets the minimum sanitary requirements of the code. And that’s what the council and the city has decided it wants to do.”
Burns said that if the City does not act to address the fines, she plans on teaming up with other Lynn attorneys to sue the city.
“I’m hoping that the city is going to read this [and] that they’re going to do something. And, you know, we need to see who else will agree with me on this. If not, I will be planning on getting the other attorneys representing condominiums in the City of Lynn together to see if we have to file suit against the City of Lynn for this unfair action,” Burns said.
Donovan said that the Department of Inspectional Services has seen a lot of non-compliance from property managers. He said that his department has offered to facilitate the registration process by bringing the owner occupancy affidavits directly to property managers, but that the city still saw non-compliance.
“Unfortunately the property managers at some of these locations are noncooperative. We’ve offered to send people from city hall, our ordinance officer actually, into these condo complexes and, and meet with the people, the elderly people or anybody who wants to come down. We’ll help them fill out the forms, we’ll take the phones back to City Hall, and you’ll never hear from us. And we’re told that that’s too much of an inconvenience. So we’ve offered to come to their place of establishment and do this work. And the property managers say ‘no, that’s not acceptable.’ I don’t know what to say,” Donovan said.
Anthony Cammalleri can be reached at [email protected].
