Broken Glass Houses
Behind Larry Glass’ crusade to change how Eureka deals with dangerous rentals
(Sept. 3, 2009) Larry Glass is a firm believer in the “broken windows” theory, which holds that if you neglect the little problems, your neighborhood will go downhill fast: Start with a busted window, this theory goes, and before long you’ll have graffiti on the walls, trash in the streets, apathetic (or just pathetic) residents turning to petty crime, theft, domestic violence. Soon, you’ve got a full-fledged problem house on your hands — one of those nightmare properties that’s perpetually lit by the spinning disco lights of patrol cars. If only someone had fixed that damn window.
If you’re unlucky enough to live near one of these festering dens, you’ll know it. Glass sure does. Three doors down from him, in Old Town Eureka, there’s a house that he says is the main source of crime in his neighborhood — has been for years. And his is not a unique situation. In 2006, when Glass was canvassing Eureka’s streets in his run for City Council, he heard the same story again and again — a story he’s continued to hear during his tenure as Eureka’s First Ward representative. It goes like this: “People had problem houses in their neighborhood, [and] they were all just completely exhausted from raising the issue with the City and having nothing happen.”
Glass, looking rather exhausted himself, spoke these words at Eureka City Hall last Tuesday evening during an informal public forum. Not many had shown up — maybe 15 people, most of them landlords and property managers who’d come looking for another fight in a battle they’ve been having with Glass since April, when he unveiled his plan to address the crime and blight caused, he says, by Eureka’s problem rentals. The plan, which Glass and a city-approved citizens’ task force had been developing for two years, called for a new system of complaint-driven rental inspections to be organized through two new staff positions — one full-time, one part-time — and funded with a $35 annual per-unit fee charged to landlords.
The proposal went over — as a Times-Standard reader put it on that paper’s Web site — like a turd in a punchbowl, at least among those who’d be affected by it directly. Outraged landlords and property managers began calling and e-mailing Glass, insisting that the inspections would violate privacy rights; claiming they shouldn’t be held responsible for all Eureka’s problems; questioning the broken windows theory; and arguing that the plan would invite tenant and staff abuse. Besides, they said, the City already has regulations to address these problems; just enforce the existing laws!
Glass pulled the ordinance from the council agenda to allow more public input. His task force met with detractors, made some changes and brought a slightly different version before the council early last month, to no avail. The landlord contingent showed up en masse to fight the proposal. Their battle reached its crescendo at a public forum held Aug. 11 at the Wharfinger building. Nearly 100 people, mostly landlords and property managers, came to express their dissent. With hyperbole worthy of a town-hall health care meeting, they called the ordinance “fascist,” “gestapo” and “draconian.” (A few landlords, it should be noted, supported the measure, but they were vastly outnumbered.)
The debate seemed headed toward a dramatic vote in council chambers. But last Tuesday, with only a few stalwart opponents in attendance, Glass abruptly and unexpectedly caved. There would be no new inspection ordinance, he announced, no additional staff positions — just a business license requirement for all landlords and a slightly different fee structure.
“I’m not embarrassed by the things we were proposing before,” Glass said in his characteristically dry delivery. “But I’ve been persuaded that they’re not gonna fly.” He remains skeptical — as is his professed nature — that baby steps like the one’s now being proposed will make much of a dent in Eureka’s crime problems. “But who knows,” he said flatly. “Maybe this will do it. It’s worth a shot.”
Alyssa Docktor and her friends sometimes stare out her front window with binoculars, lights out, watching the horror show across the street. “It’s really bad,” she told the Journal last week. The apartment complex — strewn with garbage and cat feces, broken windows kept in place with packing tape or boarded up with plywood — is among Eureka’s most notorious trouble spots. Recently, Docktor watched as a woman fled into an apartment, locking out five angry women behind her. They yelled. One approached the apartment and somehow broke a window. A man emerged with a handgun, threatening to shoot the women. Then another guy from another apartment came out with a gun tucked into his jeans. More screaming, posturing and, eventually, all-out fighting ensued. The police finally arrived, but not before one woman’s face had been bloodied and swollen.
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SEVEN Comments
Comment / By Not buying it / Sept. 4, 2009, 10:31 a.m.
If Glass had limited his ambitions the way Rancho Cordova did—leaks, smoke detectors, sanitation, broken windows—he would have had 1/100th the opposition. But instead he proposed a limitless approach where investigators could cite and demand repair for anything—a staircase with risers an inch higher than current code; a sloping floor; a couple of missing roof tiles; dry rot in window frames. These are not the stuff of substandard housing. They are part of living in a city with an unusually old housing stock. Not once did Glass acknowledge that. Despite numerous opportunities to do so, not once did he propose limiting the scope of the inspections. If he had, I would have signed on in a minute instead of still fuming about the rank stupidity of the proposal and my certainty that he will try to bring it back again. Right now he’s only one vote away from pulling it off. It won’t be long until he gets away with it.
By the way, your numbers on the Wharfinger showdown are not even close. There were far more than 100 people there.
Comment / By Parke Bostrom / Sept. 4, 2009, 4:56 p.m.
Please see my lengthy comments in response to this article on my blog. Here is the link:
http://parke.dreamhosters.com/s9y/a/16
(Alternatively, just click on my name, above, as it is linked to the correct entry on my blog.)
Thank you!
Comment / By Therese Duke / Sept. 5, 2009, 8:32 p.m.
If thoroughly investigated by law enforcement, a general pattern would emerge that a group of marauding substance abusers move into the apartments of disabled individuals and threaten, or otherwise coerse them into silence while the “squatters” tear the place up. This has been the case in more than one instance that I know of. The blue ghetto on Wabash is one example, the Squires housing at California and Harris is another.
I have direct knowledge that disabled people are being repeatedly exploited in Eureka, often losing their Section 8 vouchers, because they’re housing more people than approved by the Housing Authority. The next step for these already challenged individuals is eviction.
The end result is that our most at risk population is victimized twice; first by the substance abusers that move in and take over the residence and then by law enforcement officials that can’t or won’t protect them.
I don’t presume to have the answer. This is a complex problem that cannot be easily solved. But, indeed, something must to be done to help all those involved, the abusers and the abused.
And finally, this solution would need to include the neighbors that have been victimized. Just by virtue of the location of their homes these individuals have been made to endure the destruction of their neighborhood. Their suffering deserves acknowledgment.
Comment / By Big Rub / Sept. 8, 2009, 11:48 p.m.
Slumlords oppose! Who could have guessed it?
Why haven’t these noncompliant bastards been fined yet?
Fine them on the first offense. If they can’t fix a window within 3 months, they are worthless as a landlord.
Comment / By kathy anderson / Sept. 9, 2009, 9:59 p.m.
Had Larry Glass really cared about how rental property looks he would have taken a more positive and preventive attitude toward the subject rather than forcing another law upon this community. Incentives work better than punishment to inspire people to change their way of living. Encouraging people in his district to fix broken windows by offering help or materials to home owners will endear people to him where punishment and fines will only piss them off! But that means that neighbors will have to get involved with eachother……oh my!
Comment / By DM Kelley / Sept. 10, 2009, 9:20 a.m.
So when a tenant breaks a window it’s the landlords fault? When a tenant destroys carpets, it’s the landlords fault? So when a tenant puts holes in the drywall, it’s the landlords fault?
The ordinance was intended to go after one landlord in particular, with good reason. But, instead of going through the proper procedures in shutting down the guy, the city proposed a useless ordinance. The whole thing is redundancy in regards to the laws already in place at the state, county and city levels.
What it comes down to is a pathetic way for the city to make a buck. Scrapping the bottom of the barrel to balance their budget.
When an applicant is viewing a dirty, substandard unit it comes down to their choice to hand the application to the landlord. They accept the conditions they see. If these applicants accept these deplorable conditions, then complain, it’s hypocracy. 99.9% of the landlords know, if you have a dirty place, you will only get dirty people.
And here is something that Mr. Glass seems to miss the point on - you can take the cat out of the hood, but you cannot take the hood out of the cat.
Now the city wants to have landlords register their rentals for a fee. Funny, this is FREE Public Information. Any yahoo with a computer can find out who owns a piece of property.
Again, city looking for an easy way to make a buck
Comment / By Randy Shaw / Sept. 28, 2009, 8:40 p.m.
Having sued Ted Loring 27 years ago (and winning) I can hardly believe I find myself agreeing with his comments. The Glass proposal was way over-the-top (interior inspections? HELLO 4th amendment!) and there was no apparent effort to develop consensus in the community. But the choice of a few to live in squalor does bring down the neighborhood for the many, and everyone benefits if there is some limit to how low the appearance of a property can sink before a landlord needs to act…in their best interests and the neighborhood. The Glass plan failed because it went waaay too far, and not because it violated some mythical right of the few to impose squalor on the many.