Sonoma County has limited knowledge of its rental housing stock. At any given moment, no one in the county, including County and City staff, knows how many rental units there are, where they are, how many people live in them, what the prevailing rents are, or when and why tenants are removed. While there are some point-in-time surveys (like the U.S. Census and HUD data) that can approximate some of this information, there is no real time understanding of rental housing and the existing data only goes down to the census tract level, at best.
A rental registry would change this. A rental registry is, at its most basic, a business licensing or registration program, akin to what already exists in other major industries. Rental registries exist throughout California and the United States, including unincorporated Marin County, unincorporated Los Angeles County, Oakland, and even Cleveland, OH. ( For a compelling example of the potential, see Oakland’s publicly accessible eviction dashboard.) Rental registries vary widely, sometimes covering all rental properties or just some, sometimes capturing lots of information or very little. A registry is essentially a data-collection tool that can be modified according to the needs of the jurisdiction that implements it.
Note that a rental registry does not collect any individually identifying information about renters, so it does not increase vulnerability for renters.
For Sonoma Valley, a rental registry could have several purposes:
Track prevailing rents
Monitor eviction filings and displacement of people from affordable housing situations; identify patterns of unjust evictions
Map the density of rental housing
Identify naturally occurring affordable housing pockets that would enable the City / County to activate preservation strategies
Give the City and County more granular information on full-time residency that could be invaluable during emergencies, especially evacuations
Track conversions to short-term rentals
Document rental application fees charged to low-income housing seekers
Show that inclusionary units in market-rate developments are, in fact, being rented by residents in need of such units and at the required affordable rate.
Give the City / County real time information on the efficacy of its policy approaches to the housing crisis
Currently, Sonoma County tracks termination notices, and has committed in its Housing Element to a rental registry, but there is no indication that other functions are anticipated.
A rental registry reveals foundational information that unlocks other interventions to stem the housing crisis. Without comprehensive data on the rental market, policymakers can only guess at the right policy reforms and their effects.
Implementing this strategy requires advocacy, start-up funding, and ongoing political commitment and funding.