At the end of last year, 30 residential rental buildings were compliant with village code in Riverside, a marked increase from just 15 at the end of 2024. With 57 such rental buildings in town, that means more than half of them are now compliant as required by Riverside’s rental registration program.
“I think that’s meaningful progress. The units are inspected on a three-year cycle, so full compliance is going to take some time, but we’re focused on steady improvement,” said Anne Cyran, Riverside’s community development director.
Cyran said many of the buildings that still do not comply with village code have more issues that could take time to fix than those that have already reached compliance.
“Generally, they are the larger buildings,” she told the Landmark of the buildings that remain noncompliant. “It’s harder to have complete compliance when you have so many units in a specific building, so I think that’s generally a factor.”
She said the noncompliant buildings vary in condition, though they do not have issues severe enough to warrant instant action.
“The majority of issues that we encounter involve delayed maintenance. Obviously, if there’s a major life-safety concern, we would address that immediately, but the majority of issues are non-life-threatening issues that just need to be addressed to ensure a high quality-of-life for the tenants,” she said.
Instead, Cyran said, most buildings that are not compliant with village code are placed on a variable timeline for the owners to bring them into accord before further action is taken. Cyran said more property owners of noncompliant buildings may begin to receive citations for repeated infractions going forward.
“We always begin with voluntary compliance. Most property owners respond and voluntarily make the corrections. We’ve used citations when repeated efforts don’t result in those improvements,” she said. “We expect, I think, a modest increase in citations as we reach the end of the voluntary compliance timelines for some properties, but that’s a normal progression in any kind of program like this.”
With a goal of reaching 60% compliance by the end of 2027, Cyran said her department’s staffers put the effort into getting property owners to comply before citations need to be issued. Such an instance would result in further staff time being devoted to the property as the case moves to the adjudication process, she said.
“We are going to work with property owners to the greatest extent possible to have voluntary compliance. In some cases, it may be helpful for us to have longer conversations with property owners about the specific issues that we’re seeing in the units and bring attention to those,” she said. “We want to make sure that folks have enough time and enough direction to address those issues prior to reinspections.”
Looking forward, Cyran said her department’s goal is to reach a high level of compliance across the board rather than taking pains to reach 100%.
“Our goal is steady, measurable improvement. The units cycle through inspections every three years, and some properties require significant investment. I think we have a realistic benchmark in the near-term,” she said. “The long-term goal is sustained high compliance across the entire rental inventory.”
