Broken Glass Houses
Simpson said property owners have actually embraced Rancho’s rental inspection program. “They start out fixing holes, then decide to redo the landscaping or paint the house, and they feel really good about it afterwards” — a sensation no doubt partially inspired by the corresponding effects on their investment. “It will keep their property value up in this economic climate,” Simpson said.
A crucial element to the program in Rancho Cordova, population 61,000, has been education and outreach — something that may have been fatally lacking in the approach taken by Glass’ task force. In Simpson’s program, landlords sit down with city staff, law enforcement and sometimes even bank representatives to discuss the regulations. “We only penalize people who refuse or drag out doing the necessary repairs,” Simpson said. She suggested that the Eureka landlords who opposed the local ordinance are simply scared, and that the city should work on education.
Landlords and property managers reached by the Journal insist that, if they were scared of Glass’ proposal, they had good reason to be. “I feel it was a waste of money,” said Joe Mori, who owns numerous rental properties in Eureka. “What made me mad about it was that all these ordinances were already in place. … And they’ve got people down there [at City Hall] who don’t do a goddamn thing. They’re a bunch of deadbeats.” (He made a point to say there are good people there, too.) Jim Paye, another Eureka landlord, agreed that the ordinance was redundant. “I think it’s another joke,” he said. “They’re just building government.”
A fundamental objection to the ordinance was the idea of forced or coerced inspections. As many property owners pointed out, it’s illegal to enter someone’s home without permission or a warrant — except in an emergency. On July 30, an Alameda County Superior Court judge found in favor of that county’s Rental Housing Owners Association in their lawsuit against the City of Hayward. The RHOA objected to provisions in Hayward’s rental housing ordinance, which they said allowed mandatory inspections without first obtaining tenant consent — a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment. In his ruling, Judge Frank Roesch agreed, commanding the city “to repeal or cure the Constitutional and statutory defects” in its municipal code.
Glass said his proposed ordinance would have been “administrative and polite” and that the city would never have demanded entry without consent. But Carla Baku, who rents out a mother-in-law unit on her property, said that’s not good enough. “Let’ssay an inspector comes up to my tenant’s door and demands entry,” Baku said. “A lot of people are cowed by authority. If they don’t know what their rights are, they’re going to [allow entry].” She was relieved when Glass dropped his proposal, saying with a chuckle that she might now be able to vote for him. While Baku sympathizes with the task force’s intent, she said the ordinance was flawed. “When things like this slide into the bureaucracy it becomes a matter of complying to the letter of the law in minutiae without really looking at what’s going on with human beings,” she said.
Ted Loring, a property manager with Eureka’s Rental Property Management, agrees. “The ordinance they put forward was baroque but well-intended,” he said. “It was confusing and, frankly, for a lot of people, a little frightening.” Specifically, Loring objected to what he saw as punitive late fees and the assumption that crime and blight emanate primarily from rentals, not owner-occupied homes. He believes the task force was driven by “possibly inaccurate perceptions” rather than facts.
“You have to look at the costs and benefits,” Loring said. “The objective seems to be to clean up properties. Anything that achieves that objective in a reasonable way deserves support.” Glass’ ordinance was not reasonable, he said, as the sheer number of people who opposed it demonstrated. “I have attended a great number of discussions in and around City Hall, and this was probably one of the best attended I’ve ever seen — and not just the bodies, but the people that were there. These people are really strong contributors in our community,” he said. “They’re good people.”
Loring thinks Glass simply misplaced his focus. “The objective is to have more effective code enforcement in Eureka,” he said. “Rentals are a piece of that, but not the whole picture. I think you have to look a bit more broadly.”
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EIGHT 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.
Comment / By rob ramey / Yesterday, 5:54 p.m.
Having sued and obtaining a judgement for aprox $10000.00 against keith taylor a dozen years ago for trashing a 1800 home I owned, I certainly don’t feel he should be on this committee!