For the first time, the City of Erie Code Enforcement Office has hired a property inspector who will be solely dedicated to rental properties.

On Thursday, Joel Brink was appointed as the city's new rental property inspector.

"A large percentage of our housing stock, a lot of residents in the city are tenants," said Erie's Director of Office Development and Services Chris Groner. "They haven't made that leap yet to homeownership, and we've discovered that needs its own attention."

In his role, Brink will work with proper owners, the apartment association, and realtors to ensure that tenants are living in suitable housing and properties are properly maintained.

"I'm going to be coming in and really connecting a lot of the dots, when it comes to rental inspections and ordinances," said Brink. "When it comes to enforcement of rental properties, I'll be making sure that tenants have a safe place to live."

Brink will also be coordinating with the city's rental registration program, to ensure that rental properties in the city are compliant with the city's safety inspection requirements.

According to Brink, a lot of his work will be based off of the Tenant Bill of Rights, which was recently passed by Erie City Council to protect both tenants and landlords.

"That's going to be a good guideline, just from the top level, to really have a philosophy to work under when we're thinking of those different programs, what can we do differently," said Brink. "Now we know that we are protected, we know those rights, we can work with that, create good programs to ensure those are all followed."

The city also announced that longtime code enforcement officer Steve Jurkovich will now serve as the assistant manager of code enforcement, where he will oversee all of the day to day operations at the office.