The Anchorage Municipal Assembly on Oct. 3 held a work session to review AO 2025-93 (and the S version of that ordinance), a proposal to amend Anchorage Municipal Code chapters 15.05 and 15.10 to require residential rental property owners to provide tenants financial relocation assistance following issuance of a notice to vacate and to add a new section in Title 8 (proposed 8.30.200) making failure to comply with an enforcement order or notice to vacate punishable as a misdemeanor.

The measure is meant, sponsors said, to give code enforcement follow-through when property owners fail to bring multiunit housing up to minimum standards. “By allowing to have this relocation assistance, it allows us to follow through with the code requirements and allows us to actually move these people and get them into a healthy location temporarily and force that landlord who’s negligent to provide some sort of resources,” said Scott Campbell, chief of inspections and supervisor of the code enforcement staff for the Municipality of Anchorage.

Supporters said the ordinance aims to address life-safety cases in older multifamily housing where buildings lack heat, hot water or have other hazardous conditions. Campell and other enforcement staff described a typically long enforcement timeline: a tenant complaint, investigation, a notice of violation (three days for a response), a notice and order if the owner fails to act, and only after persistent noncompliance a notice to vacate. Campbell said the department has taken that final step in very few instances: since his start in mid‑2022 he said code staff “had to post a notice to vacate twice where the living conditions were so bad that we felt like those folks shouldn’t be there anymore.”

Assembly members and attorneys pressed staff on practical limits to enforcement. Quincy Arms, a municipal attorney, said liens for civil penalties are recorded against properties, not against the individual or corporate owners, and that collection and litigation to convert liens into judgments is time-consuming: “They just let the fines stack up… it takes our office taking that lien to court, turning into a judgment, finding the person to go after collection efforts, years and years of effort.” Council members and staff discussed that existing civil penalties (Arms noted municipalities can apply fines such as $500 per day) have not compelled some corporate or out‑of‑state owners to act.

Several Assembly members questioned whether adding misdemeanor criminal penalties or having the municipality advance relocation costs would be effective when collection is difficult. An example discussed at length was a 60‑unit building whose boilers failed in October; Campbell said tenants there had been living with inadequate heat for months, the building had been fined about $10,000 to date and the tenants collectively paid “$131,400 a month for rent,” as discussed in the meeting. Sponsors said some Q1 budget revisions already set aside a pool of funds that could be used as an advance for relocation when necessary.

Members also debated the ordinance’s draft language. The S version incorporated several sponsor amendments (members noted amendment numbers 2, 4 and parts of 5 were added and amendment 7 was approved); Assembly members continued to discuss amendment 1, which would broaden the ordinance’s narrow exceptions. The amendment would let code enforcement recognize “unforeseen, nonnegligent circumstances” beyond a limited list of natural disasters. Assembly member Yarrow Silvers and others warned the phrase could be very broad. “The amended language expands it to an unforeseen circumstance with the limiting factor then being that it wasn’t caused by the owner’s neglect,” an attorney explained; other members asked whether that would open the door to claims unrelated to building safety.

Attendees also discussed tenant-caused damage. Sponsors said code enforcement would evaluate responsibility on a case-by-case basis; Lucas Cleek, the codabatement officer, told the Assembly that the department’s caseload is complaint-driven and that they usually see complaints from residents who lack alternatives rather than landlords asking for help when tenants damage units. Members raised the possibility of “winners and losers” if relocation assistance were denied when tenant-caused illegal activity is alleged, and some urged exploring alternatives—such as strengthening collection of fines and placing recovered funds into a neutral pool to pay relocation for all displaced tenants rather than advancing municipal funds only in selected cases.

Legal staff and members also discussed the limits of criminal enforcement when the owner is an out‑of‑state LLC. Arms said Alaska law allows prosecution of principal actors of corporations under certain circumstances but that prosecuting an out‑of‑state actor would present additional evidentiary and jurisdictional challenges. Several members described the criminal option as a tool the municipality should keep available but acknowledged it might not always be practical.

Assembly members asked for transparency and oversight if the ordinance is enacted. Scott Campbell said the department already coordinates with nonprofits (Red Cross, Alaska Coalition on Homelessness, Salvation Army) when large relocations occur and that staff would communicate major actions. Several members asked sponsors to add a requirement for an annual report on how and when relocation assistance and notices to vacate were used; sponsors agreed to add reporting to the list of required reports.

No formal vote occurred during the work session. Sponsors indicated they plan to move remaining amendments where appropriate and the Assembly planned to reconvene in a special meeting following the work session to continue consideration.

The discussion highlighted three recurring enforcement constraints: (1) long timelines and rare use of notices to vacate except in extreme life‑safety cases, (2) difficulty turning municipal fines and liens into recoverable judgments against corporate or out‑of‑state owners, and (3) the tension between narrowly targeting clearly negligent owners and avoiding overly broad exceptions that would shield noncompliant ownership from accountability. Assembly members and staff said the ordinance is intended to be narrowly tailored but that language drafting, enforcement mechanics and funding will determine whether it provides an effective enforcement tool or an administratively costly program with limited collection prospects.