Unpaid Judgment ordinance

At the next Council meeting on June 15, I will be introducing an ordinance making it possible for the City to revoke or not renew a rental license for any landlord who has unpaid legal judgments against him/her.

This came up after an article published by the Minnesota Daily discussing tenants issues with a local landlord who has come up with a novel way of dealing with judgments against him: just not paying them.

I asked City staff to look into whether there is something the City can do about this.

Interestingly, the City has the authority with all of the other licenses we give (restaurants, etc) to revoke or not renew a license if the owner has an unpaid judgment against him/her. This ordinance will therefore bring our regulation of landlords up to par with our regulation of other sorts of businesses.

Once this is passed, a landlord will have two choices if they want to continue to do business in Minneapolis: pay a legal judgment or appeal it.