RACINE, Wis. (SPECTRUM NEWS) -- The City of Racine now has a new website to help track rental properties in the city.

It is part of the city’s RENTS initiative. As part of the initiative all rental properties were supposed to be registered in the city by August 1. The deadline has now been moved back to September 8th. Racine Mayor, Cory Mason, says it will allow the city to be better able to track properties and any violations they may have. The website also contains an area where tenants can report code violations without having to fear retaliation from their landlord.

“It is written into our municipal code to have those sort of protections so that if you are looking for a safe place to live and want to make sure they have running water or whatever the repair that needs to be addressed that is not going to put them in a position where they are suddenly evicted because they were asking the landlord to keep the property up to code,” says Mayor Mason.

Once all properties are registered the goal is to create a searchable database where potential tenants can research if properties have a history of violations. For more information, you can visit the Racine Rents website.