Broken Glass Houses
So what’s in the new, scaled-down proposal? Glass wants to institute a business license requirement, allowing the city to build a database of contact information for all Eureka landlords and property managers, even those renting out a single unit. The license would cost $15 annually for the first unit, plus five dollars for each additional unit. Many landlords aren’t aware that a similar policy already exists. The current business license costs owners of four or more units $55 per year, plus $11.50 for each non-owner employee. Or it’s supposed to, anyway. Compliance, by all accounts, is exceedingly poor. Until recently, city staff estimated that Eureka has somewhere around 2,500 rental units. More recent estimates put the number closer to 6,000, with relatively few landlords holding the appropriate license.
Glass is also hoping the city will establish a coordinator position, with the salary coming through a shifting of existing resources. This coordinator would essentially monitor code violations and delegate enforcement to the appropriate agency — “kind of a triage person,” said Eureka Police Chief Garr Nielsen. Nielsen’s department will be taking on some of the enforcement burden as well, specifically through the EPD’s new Problem-Oriented Policing unit.
If, for example, a complaint comes in about people selling drugs out of an apartment complex, clearly that’s a police issue. “In those kinds of cases the POP would begin an investigation,” Nielsen said. “If the complaint is more related to the conditions of a building…that will be handled by the building department.” And so on.
Eureka Assistant City Manager-Operations Mike Knight, who oversees enforcement of municipal code violations, said they might find someone for the coordinator job in the building department, where things have slowed down in the sluggish economy. Knight believes such a move would be beneficial. The persistent problems at certain properties, he said, mostly stem from a small group of landlords who operate on the fringe of compliance. “I can think of several properties where we become aware of a problem, we get a complaint, send out two notices or issue a citation, and [the owner] will finally come into compliance. Then a few months later it returns to our department,” Knight said. “It’s cyclic.”
Knight suspects Glass’ initial ordinance could have solved many problems. “Having more staff and resources would certainly help,” he said. Nevertheless, he’s hopeful that things will improve under the latest proposal. City staff has been working hard on code compliance, he said. “But we will do better. We’ll make that effort.”
Such attitudes suggest to the members of the housing task force that there has been a sea change at City Hall and beyond, one that may prove more effective than any ordinance they could have drafted. “I think you have seen an evolution in public perception,” Ollivier said following last week’s forum. “In the beginning you had a lot of people saying this isn’t a big problem. But at the Wharfinger it was almost every speaker saying, ‘We agree there’s a problem.’ That’s a big change.”
“Yeah,” Glass agreed. “We’ve gotten out of the denial stage.” He expects to put his new proposal before the City Council sometime later this month. Even if it passes, the task force plans to continue meeting, and not just with each other. They have an agreement with City Manager David Tyson to convene monthly meetings with the new coordinator, department heads, City Attorney Sheryl Schaffner and Chief Nielsen. “I am gonna monitor this thing, as the rest of the task force will do with me,” Glass vowed. “If a year from now I’m not satisfied, then we’ll be right back here again, proposing some sort of change.”
In other words, he’ll be keeping his eyes peeled for broken windows.
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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 / Feb. 2, 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!