Assembly work session reviews ordinance to require landlord-funded tenant relocation and add misdemeanor penalties

The Anchorage Municipal Assembly on Oct. 3 held a work session to review AO 2025-93 (and the S version of that ordinance), a proposal to amend Anchorage Municipal Code chapters 15.05 and 15.10 to require residential rental property owners to provide tenants financial relocation assistance following issuance of a notice to vacate and to add a new section in Title 8 (proposed 8.30.200) making failure to comply with an enforcement order or notice to vacate punishable as a misdemeanor.

The measure is meant, sponsors said, to give code enforcement follow-through when property owners fail to bring multiunit housing up to minimum standards. “By allowing to have this relocation assistance, it allows us to follow through with the code requirements and allows us to actually move these people and get them into a healthy location temporarily and force that landlord who’s negligent to provide some sort of resources,” said Scott Campbell, chief of inspections and supervisor of the code enforcement staff for the Municipality of Anchorage.

Supporters said the ordinance aims to address life-safety cases in older multifamily housing where buildings lack heat, hot water or have other hazardous conditions. Campell and other enforcement staff described a typically long enforcement timeline: a tenant complaint, investigation, a notice of violation (three days for a response), a notice and order if the owner fails to act, and only after persistent noncompliance a notice to vacate. Campbell said the department has taken that final step in very few instances: since his start in mid‑2022 he said code staff “had to post a notice to…