A few years ago Salt Lake City launched its Landlord/Tenant Initiative program - also known as The Good Landlord Program. This initiative seeks to work with property owners to benefit the health, safety and welfare of city residents and to reduce the demand for city services. To summarize the benefit of the program, landlords are held to a higher standard for keeping their properties taken care of and their tenants are held to a standard of being good citizens while in the property. This benefits the city because they have less ordinance violations and less police callouts to the properties, saving them costs as well. The city passes on some of that savings to landlords who participate in the program by reducing their business licensing fees by about 95%.

To participate in the program, property owners need to apply to the city, take a 4 hour class (and repeat the class every three years to continue enrollment), and agree to take measures to reduce crimes. The measures include

• requiring compliance to city codes by the landlord and the tenants

• following fair housing laws and not discriminating

• agreeing not to retaliate against tenants that exercise their right to file complaints against landlords not in compliance

• tracking application denials and evictions

• providing the tenant with good contact info for the owner or the owner’s agent

• encouraging the use of background and credit checks on potential tenants

As a property manager myself, these measures are common sense items that I do in the normal course of things to protect my property and myself and to make things easier on my tenants too. They are not anything excessive or burdensome as a landlord at all in my opinion. The four hour class can seem a hardship of time at first glance, but I have found the class to be a great resource over the years and I actually take it every two years as part of my real estate license renewal in addition to this program.

This program also allows landlords to remove tenants who do not comply with local laws a bit more easily too. That can definitely be helpful.

On the tenant side it's beneficial too. If a landlord is not holding up his/her end of the lease the tenant can file a complaint with the city and the landlord can be removed from the program. The landlord would then have to pay the full business licensing fees that are 95% higher than they are in the program! Noncompliance can be failure to fix a heater if it breaks, not keeping the building habitable, not following city ordinances on keeping the lawn mowed, any many other such reasons.

Salt Lake City is not the only city in the valley that has programs like this. Others are Ogden, Clearfield, North Salt Lake, West Jordan, South Salt Lake, and many more. If you are a landlord, or plan to become one, in the valley, I recommend looking into whether or not this program is available where you have your property. I have not run into any detriments to participation yet.