After talks with city staff and housing experts, the Austin City Council is pursuing a rental registration ordinance and more education programs to stave off bad landlords and dilapidated rental properties.

Council members voted Monday at its work session to look into a series of rental property recommendations.

The council would create an ordinance to require all Austin rental property owners and managers to register with the city. In addition, city departments would come together to create a mandatory educational program for owners and managers that covers owner and tenant rights. Once landlords and managers take the class, they are certified with the city. City officials say the registration process and class would be free.

Under the recommendations, city inspections would continue as they have, on a complaint-only basis. However, owners and managers that repeatedly violate the city’s housing policies would be cited more often, and continued housing complaints could result in licensing and/or a scheduled inspection housing program, among other things.

The plan is a draft thus far, created after Council Members Judy Enright and Jeff Austin met with Community Development Director Craig Hoium and Austin Housing and Redevelopment Authority Executive Director Jon Erichson.

This approach is similar to the 2011 registration ordinance the council previously pursued, according to Hoium. Among its biggest aims is to create more communication between the city and rental property owners.

“It would allow us to create a database for who owns, whether it’s the planning department, police department or fire,” Hoium said. “If we need to contact property owners or managers, then we would have the information to do that.”

The recommendations are the result of a renewed push by the council to deal with housing issues after council members voted the 2011 registration measure down, despite support from the local landlords association. The council made rental property one of its 2013 goals and declared eight properties hazardous to the public last summer.

Council members discussed a potential rental license measure at its retreat earlier this year, which spurred discussion once more between the council and landlords. Enright and Austin, who have been outspoken about a rental registration ordinance, decided to look into the matter after a Vision 2020 rental housing forum in early March.

Not everyone on the council was pleased with the recommendations, however. The council voted 5-2 to have Hoium draw up a draft ordinance, with Council Members Jeremy Carolan and Michael Jordal dissenting.

“My concern is still, I think we’re all on the same page, that we want the city’s housing stock to improve,” Carolan said. “I just want to make sure that we’re addressing what we’re truly trying to address and not just add something and we still have the same problem.”

Enright said the measure is necessary as a first step to addressing all of Austin’s housing issues. She also said the city would hopefully work with area organizations to educate renters as well, such as the area-produced landlord/tenant rights DVDs and other initiatives.

“We have renters that don’t understand their rights, we have landlords that don’t want them to know their rights and we have landlords who don’t even understand those rights,” Enright said. “This is an education piece for everybody.”

Peter Grover of the Austin Area Landlords Association said the group was looking into a renters rights class as well.

Hoium said he would likely have a draft ordinance done at the end of April or early May, which would go before the city planning commission and the Austin City Council at that time.