Topeka committee advances rental‑registry concept after months of mapping, inspections and public input

The Topeka City Public Health and Safety Committee met June 30 for an extended public input session on rental‑housing accountability and next steps for enforcement.

Chair Karen Hiller framed the session as part of the city’s Changing Our Culture of Property Maintenance initiative, saying the work aims to protect public health and neighborhood stability and to reduce the number of substandard structures. Staff and community presenters described tools intended to improve transparency and to focus enforcement on problem properties.

Travis Leup, the city’s GIS manager, presented a phase‑one rental map assembled from county parcel data and manual assessor lookups. "What we arrived upon and what makes up this map is approximately 300 parcels of which there are over 12,000 rental units," he said. Leup said the team targeted parcels with five or more units and envisioned a web‑hosted map that would display registry status with red/yellow/green symbology and offer district filters and links to registration pages.

Carrie Higgins reviewed federal inspection categories for HUD‑funded properties, explaining that project‑based multifamily, LIHTC (low‑income housing tax credit) projects and voucher placements are inspected under different programs and schedules. She noted HUD’s adoption of the INSPIRE standard and the resulting learning curve for some inspectors, and she described the voucher program’s pass/fail reinspection process.

Two registry proposals were presented. Resident Daisy Karimi proposed a community‑led multifamily registry pilot focused on five‑plus unit properties to create an authoritative, searchable record of owners, LLC principals, unit counts and inspection status. Karimi said the pilot should include enforcement paths for non‑registration and suggested fee models that have ranged from about $15 to $50 per unit in other cities.

Property Maintenance Director John Shardy presented a city draft with a phased approach starting with five‑plus unit properties. The draft would require landlords to register legal owner and agent contact information, unit count and accessibility information and would display a 24‑month rolling inspection and violation history in a public portal. Shardy outlined a tiered model: Tier 1 (clean record) inspected every four years and proposed at $20 per unit; Tier 2 inspected every two years at $30 per unit; Tier 3 (life‑safety or repeat violations) inspected annually at $40 per unit. The draft included an initial implementation estimate of about $334,932 (first year, including vehicles) and roughly $250,000 in annual maintenance costs thereafter, with two FTE inspectors proposed to support the rollout.

Committee members, landlords and tenants questioned scope and enforcement. Landlord representatives asked whether fees were intended to generate revenue; the city manager replied the intent is to recover costs and make the program cost‑neutral over time. Several speakers, including tenant advocates, pressed for moving the issue to the full council quickly. Topeka Tenants volunteers reported that tenants they surveyed were broadly supportive of a registry to close information gaps about landlords’ histories.

A recurring legal and policy tension arose over interior inspections. Staff emphasized they would not enter units without tenant consent; some speakers noted state‑level proposals for administrative inspection tools have been introduced but face legal and public‑trust obstacles. Presenters and residents also urged clearer data‑sharing commitments from HUD and KHRC so the city can integrate federal inspection results into local tracking.

After extended public comment, a committee member moved to advance the item toward council and a second was offered; the transcript records no formal recorded vote during the meeting, though the city manager said staff would bring the proposal to council for consideration. Chair Hiller and staff urged continued stakeholder work to refine tiers, fees, legal mechanisms and the public portal.

What happens next: staff indicated the city intends to bring the registry concept to council for discussion in July and to continue stakeholder discussions (landlord groups, tenant advocates and county/state partners) to refine data definitions, enforcement tools and costs.