The City of Golden has been exploring the possibility of creating a rental property registry, with officials hoping the registry would help them better understand the city’s rental housing landscape but others fearing it would become the basis for more fees and regulation.

While nothing is official yet, City Council members mulled over a summary of public feedback during a Tuesday study session and acknowledged more outreach around local housing is needed.

The impetus for the registry comes from two sources, according to staff. The first is the city’s participation in the National League of Cities Healthy Housing Cohort, and the other is from Golden’s own Affordable Housing Committee and its review of the city’s Housing Needs and Strategies Assessment.

Between April and May of this year, the city conducted the first of three rounds of community outreach efforts to gauge initial reactions to the idea, with the target audience being landlords, tenants, and property managers.

“When we did this engagement, we did it with the intention of not requesting a ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ but more about opening a dialog around a rental registry and around housing needs,” Golden Affordable Housing Policy Coordinator Laura McKinney said. “So, much of the information (here) is more anecdotal and collaborative. It’s not a definitive yes, move forward or no, don’t.”

During these discussions, city officials concur that very little is known about Golden’s long-term rental inventory, making it difficult to identify gaps and needs around housing.

City staff has already spent several months researching peer communities that have already implemented similar programs — Ft. Collins, Boulder, Grand Junction, and Edgewater.

Of those locals who participated in the outreach and community listening sessions, more than half self-identified as landlords, and only 12% identified as tenants.

Participants in Goldens’ outreach events expressed several emerging concerns, including that a voluntary registry would eventually evolve into a mandatory program with fees, inspections, licensing, and additional regulation, much like what happened with Denver’s long-term rental market.

In 2021, the Denver City Council Business Committee approved a rental licensing policy requiring landlords to pay for long-term licenses to rent out their properties.

The “Healthy Residential Rentals for All” program was framed by the committee as a way for Denver to improve the conditions of rental properties, help the city track its housing stock, and establish better communications between tenants and landlords by requiring long-term licenses.

Others in Golden needed clarification about the registry’s actual need and benefit and worried about database privacy and its potential to become a tool to enforce health, safety, and maintenance compliance on rentals.

Some suggest that most of the needed information may already exist in county assessor records, utility billing, and online real estate apps like Zillow.

A rental registry can take on many meanings. But in this case, McKinney said it was presented to residents as more of an informational data point for the long-term rentals in Golden.

“We were thinking of including things like contact information for landlords, tenants, and property managers, basic information about the property, including when it was built and if there were any major updates, and then potentially branching out from there if we have other data points that we’re interested in, but we left it very open-ended when we were describing the rental industry,” she said.

For Golden, the next steps will include watching what is happening with neighboring municipalities implementing rental registries, a possible landlord resource web page, and a closer look at state and local laws, as well as the city’s own housing ordinances, before moving forward.