By Quincy Midthun, Mayors Innovation Project
April marks Fair Housing Month, a time to celebrate the landmark passing of the Fair Housing Act which aimed to eliminate discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing. Today, this month serves as a critical call to action to ensure that everyone has access to safe, affordable housing. Renters make up over one third of US households, and are more likely than homeowners to encounter substandard living conditions that can negatively impact health and safety. Maintaining a quality rental housing stock is critical for preventing the displacement of long-term residents, keeping families near their jobs and schools, and promoting the health and safety of individuals and their communities.
Last year, under the leadership of Mayor Diana Merdian, MIP Member City Sterling, IL passed a Rental Inspection Program that ensures safe living conditions for tenants and a safe rental housing stock. Read on to hear how the program was passed and to learn about the early successes of the program.
What is Sterling, IL’s Rental Inspection Program and how does it operate?
The Rental Inspection Program ensures that residential rental properties in Sterling are safe, well-maintained, and meet basic health and safety standards. The policy requires all residential rental properties to be registered with the City and to be inspected at least once every four years. The inspection checklist for the program, made in collaboration with local landlords, includes basic requirements such as smoke alarms, safe decks and stairways, a functioning sewage system, and properly connected stoves and vents.
Units are classified on a scale of A – D based on their checklist score. Those that score an A only need to be inspected every four years, whereas units classified as B-D need to be inspected more frequently. Property owners that do not register their units or repeatedly fail inspections will face fines. “This isn’t a money maker. That’s not the point,” said Mayor Merdian. “The whole point is that we have a [safe and healthy] housing stock… and [ultimately] the hope is that with better rental properties the fire department will have fewer calls.”
What were the main barriers to getting the program established and how did you overcome them?
Sterling passed the rental inspection program in March of 2025 after nearly 20 years of debate. Mayor Merdian explained that “They would never have it for a vote, and it just kept bringing up a lot of conflict, a lot of emotion, and a lot of pain and a lot of people were getting hurt… [I said] we have to put it on the agenda and finally either pass it or vote it down.” The policy faced pushback from landlords and community associations who were worried about increased costs to register and repair units. To ease minds, the City emphasized transparency throughout the process, posting the checklist and an example of an inspection notice to their website, doing mock inspections with landlords, and presenting to council what a Class A unit looks like.
After the policy passed, city staff had the task of establishing a rental inventory to find out what rental units existed in the city. This was a tedious, lengthy process that involved scouring property tax data, sewer bills, and physically walking the streets to talk to residents and neighbors. “[Our City staff] have been instrumental in this process… if nobody is out there on the street looking at these houses, some of these [rentals] never get seen,” said Mayor Merdian.
What key successes or breakthroughs would you like to share?
To incentivize program participation, the City hosted an open house where landlords could register their units and waive their registration fees. “I was absolutely shocked at the [high] turn out. We thought either nobody was going to show up or everybody was going to show up and be mad at us,” explained Mayor Merdian. In fact, at the open house, the City registered over 1,000 units and built relationships with landlords in the community. They even connected with a couple that agreed to buy and renovate a blighted home in the city’s possession. “We’ve not been able to literally give that house away for six years… we just sold it to them for a dollar… [the open house allowed] us to meet good landlords in our community… and flip a house that we haven’t had on the tax rolls for over six years.”
Since Sterling passed the ordinance, neighboring cities are looking to Sterling as an example to start their own Rental Inspection Programs. “The fact that other communities are reaching out [to learn from us] and wanting to make their community better, to me that’s a success,” said Mayor Merdian.
What advice would you give other mayors?
One of Mayor Merdian’s key pieces of advice to other mayors was to remember why you’re pursuing the policy and to keep that “why” at the center of your messaging. “We just want to make sure that people are safe and healthy,” said Mayor Merdian. “Can we all just agree that having smoke detectors and the ability to get out of a burning house is [important]?… We’ve lost three lives… the fact that we’ve lost any is not ok.”
Merdian also emphasized the importance of reaching out to other cities with established programs and to national groups like the Mayors Innovation Project who could offer support and best practices. “When I got a memo from Mayors Innovation, they showed me communities that were even smaller than us that had [programs like this].” Providing those examples convinced skeptics that a rental inspection policy was possible in Sterling.
Despite the initial pushback, the council succeeded in passing one of the most controversial policies in Sterling’s recent history. The city’s Code Enforcement Department is well on their way to getting the program fully operational and ensuring the safety of rental housing stock. “It’s going to take us a while to get everything registered and inspected, but we know we have to start somewhere,” said Mayor Merdian.