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Draft bill would create statewide rental housing registry; committee flags privacy, municipal coordination and fees
Summary
A draft section would require long-term and short-term rental owners to register units with DHCD and pay an annual $35 fee unless already registered locally; committee members raised privacy and municipal-fee coordination concerns and asked for alternatives such as aggregated tax-department data.
The committee reviewed draft language on Feb. 19 that would create a statewide rental housing registry maintained by the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD), including a $35 annual registration fee for long-term and short-term rental units, legislative counsel Cameron Wood said.
The draft lists registration data to include owner/landlord name and contact information, unit location, year built, unit type, number of units in a building, school property account number, accessibility features and other DHCD-determined fields. Owners of long-term rentals would file within 30 days of a landlord certificate filed with the Department of Taxes; short-term rentals would register within 30 days of renting a unit. The draft exempts owners of mobile-home lots who do not own the manufactured home located on the lot.
Municipalities that already operate a rental-registration program would not have to pay the state fee for units registered locally, but would be required to supply their registration data to DHCD so the state registry can be updated.
Committee members raised privacy and practical concerns. Wood noted the draft does not prohibit the registry from being public and that some of the collected fields (phone numbers, email addresses) could become public records unless the committee specifies confidentiality protections. Members also discussed alternatives: the Department of Taxes already receives landlord-certificate data (form LRC-142) that contains owner and tenant information; some committee members suggested obtaining aggregate or non-identifying data from the tax department rather than a public statewide registry.
Why it matters: A statewide registry would create a single statewide dataset for housing planning and emergency response, but it intersects with privacy concerns, municipal registries and existing tax-department data flows.
Next steps: Committee members expressed interest in exploring less intrusive alternatives and asked counsel to obtain testimony from the Department of Taxes, DHCD, municipal registry operators and public-safety stakeholders before advancing the provision.
