Coppell Chronicle Vol. 3, No. 34
Rental Properties Proliferate in Coppell • Trustees Issue Statement Against Vouchers • Decision Delayed on Blackberry Farm’s Gate • Check It Out: Cozby Library Has New Manager
Rental Properties Proliferate in Coppell
The number of houses in Coppell that aren’t occupied by their owners has increased by more than a third in four years.
During Tuesday’s City Council meeting, City Manager Mike Land said his staff is aware of 1,474 single-family rental properties in Coppell. In 2019, he said, they knew of 1,081 such properties. According to my calculator, that’s an increase of more than 36 percent.
You may not be surprised by those numbers, based on what you’ve seen as you drive around Coppell.
“When you talk to folks in the community,” Land said, “people notice in this community that it’s not as ‘kept’ — I guess is the way to say that — as it has been in the past.”
Land shared those statistics during a “Code Compliance 101” presentation delivered by Assistant Director of Community Development Luay Rahil. The city added a third Code Compliance officer in July, and Rahil said that trio spends between 40 percent and 50 percent of their time on rental properties. They inspect each property every time there’s a change in tenant, he said, and they have performed more than 500 such inspections this year. Each of the three officers does at least one per day.
“When I talk to staff, it is a huge time-consumer,” Land said.
Regarding time: Rahil wanted the council and the public to understand that it’s not realistic to expect a complaint about tall grass or a broken fence to be resolved in a day or two. He showed this calendar to demonstrate the process.
“I knew it took time, but seeing the calendar helped,” Mayor Wes Mays said.
Rahil also shared this roadmap that illustrates how Coppell rarely brings the hammer down on code violators. He said fewer than 5 percent of cases get to Step 9. “All it takes is a phone call,” Rahil said. “Talk to us, let us know why you’re not fixing it, and we will work with you.”
That said, as the number of rental properties in Coppell has grown, so has the amount of grief given to the city’s Code Compliance officers.
“This is the culture of working with them with empathy and compassion, but what we’re finding is that the pushback is harder, faster, not as nice,” Land said. “Therefore, staff does take it on the chin.”
City Attorney Bob Hager — who has held the same role for Duncanville, Lancaster, and Red Oak — said it may be time for Coppell to get tougher.
“You have to be very vigilant about this,” Hager said. “You might have to start getting uglier than you have been in the past. You cannot afford for your housing stock to slip.”
I don’t want to end this article on such a grim note, so here’s a laugh-out-loud moment from Rahil’s presentation. He said a resident recently called Code Compliance to complain about a neighbor’s kids touching a shared fence. Rahil said the resident wanted to file that complaint anonymously.
Trustees Issue Statement Against Vouchers
“All politics is local” is a phrase often attributed to former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill. It came to mind last week when I received a statement attributed to the Coppell ISD Board of Trustees.