Code red

WHEN A HOUSE IS NOT A HOME

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There are only a few residents left on Helen Street near downtown Lansing.

Out of 13 houses, seven are boarded up or red-tagged as unfit to live in. One is vacant but well-manicured. Neighbors say the owner stopped trying to rent it but keeps it up nice.


Another, 604 Helen, is fire-damaged with a tarp on the roof. The fire was two years ago, neighbors say.


There is a faded and weathered red tag on the screen door, but it’s not in the city online public database. Other houses on the street have changed hands and tenants often, but now sit empty and falling apart.



The conditions on Helen highlight why the city needs to tighten its code enforcement and regulate landlords more diligently. Neighbors and the community are suffering from blight. Some unsafe properties fall under the radar and are being rented without certification or inspection.


Some neighbors have accepted that it’s just the way it is. Others are choosing to fight.


The Lansing City Council General Services Committee has been deliberating solutions since the summer. Committee Chairwoman Jessica Yorko proposed licensing landlords before they can rent properties. It’s a notion that’s met resistance from the code enforcement office and the landlord association, but has support from residents who say they’ll be happy to see any action toward improved code compliance and neighborhood care.


IS LICENSING THE ANSWER?


Complaints from Fourth Ward residents got Yorko thinking of solutions.


There’s no lack of horror stories.


Yorko said she’s heard of landlords who remove red tags and rent the house anyway. Tenants have rented with lack of plumbing and flooring, she said. Loads of tenants tell her they’ve never seen a rental certificate even though it should be in plain view in any rental.


Fines are in place for code violators, but sometimes they just accrue until the home is auctioned and then “the city is made whole,” said Scott Sanford, Lansing’s lead housing inspector.


Yorko proposed landlord licensing as a stricter way to regulate the behaviors as well as the properties.


“The benefit of licensing landlords, in addition to property, is that we can require other things to get the license, such as taking a class that goes over some of the areas/issues we keep having problems with, and we can require that the owner be current on all property taxes in the city in order to obtain the license,” she wrote in an email to those attending the meetings. “And, if need be, we could revoke the license with stiff penalties for operating without a license.”


Currently the city requires rental properties to be registered and inspected before they are occupied. The certificate of registration is to be posted in the dwelling.


But many rentals fall through the cracks and the certificate is often not posted.


There are 33,766 registered rental property units in Lansing. Of those, 9,910 are single-family houses and 1,701 are duplexes. There are 1,886 apartment buildings with multiple units, according to Sanford.


This represents an uptick of rental percentages in the city, which is expected to continue to rise. The concern is not an increase in rentals – the Greater Lansing Housing Coalition says more affordable rentals are needed – but the ability to regulate them and ensure they are safe and healthy environments for the tenants.


Code Compliance has performed 3,700 rental certification inspections and 457 safety inspections and written more than 13,000 premise violation letters since Jan. 1, Sanford said.



It’s a rough pace for a department with only seven active code enforcement officers, down from nine 10 years ago. The officers enforce the housing and zoning codes, and perform safety and premise inspections for rentals and home-owner occupied dwellings.


Committee Vice Chairwoman Carol Wood said budget constraints forced a hiring freeze and at the same time “we’ve had an increase in rentals over the years that have made it more difficult as we’ve dealt with the rental issue.”


The third committee member, Jody Washington, was absent Nov. 4 and did not respond to requests for comment.


The Rental Property Owners Association of Mid- Michigan, which has over 200 members, opposes landlord licensing.


In fact, Gary Calkins, spokesman for the association, said he believes code inspections are adequate and more problems can be seen in the city with owner-occupied properties than rentals.


“The city is having a little difficulty at the present time,” he said. “One of their inspectors retired, but up until recently they’ve been quite timely. Code compliance is doing a good job.


“Sure, there are properties that not registered, some that don’t realize they have to register, they tried to sell and can’t sell their property and are renting it to bring in some money. But the bulk are registered.”


MAILING IT IN


Oversight in Lansing partly relies on a landlord honor system.


Sanford said there were 400 violations in September and 35 got re-inspected. The remainder got a certificate of compliance by sending back “comply sign notice and letter” – a letter that says they would fix the violation.


The frustration from lack of resources was thick at the committee meeting Nov. 4.


Assistant City Attorney Billy O’Berry shared a state statute which she said could prohibit Lansing from licensing landlords. The statute, MCL 125.401, allows communities with populations of 100,000 or less to have stricter regulations. But O’Berry said it hasn’t been tested in court.


Sanford supports keeping the system the way it is. Chronic red tags receive tag monitoring, being assessed $150 a month in fines. The fines are attached to the property and not the landlord, so when the property changes hands, like in an auction or foreclosure sale, the fines are included in the sale price and “the city is made whole,” Sanford said.



Currently, there are 456 red tags in the city (less than 1 percent of the total housing stock), according to Sanford. Of that 164 are under tag monitoring. He could not supply how many are rentals or lengths of time for the tag monitoring.


In the last committee meeting Yorko shared how Grand Rapids regulates rentals, including a vacant property registry.


Sanford asked what department handled the work.


Yorko: “At this point Scott, we are looking at options for improving and as far as what department that goes with is not a topic we’ve broached ... .We could do this and yes it would be a matter of figuring out who in the city would do it, what staff, what department, but it doesn’t mean we can’t do it. We just haven’t yet decided how we would do it.”


Sanford’s response: “The reason we don’t do it is we don’t have a need for it.”


Sanford said he called Cedar Rapids, Iowa, another city with licensing for landlords.


“They have four code compliance officers, that’s all they do is inspections,” Sanford said. “They have a separate department for premise, a separate department for zoning, a separate department for that. When you start talking about bringing this stuff in, especially if you’re saying you’re going to bring it under the housing code, we have to stop at this point and go where are we going to come up with money? We don’t have the funding.


Jacqueline Payne, a resident, interrupted.


“Can we legally do it?” she asked. “I realize this will be a nuisance for your department but can we legally do it?”


'WE WANT TO LOOK LIKE WE CARE'


The quaint cul de sac at the end of Lenawee Street was a perfect neighborhood for Chance and Stephanie Boyd to settle into 10 years ago.


But the cul de sac started to feel like a trap a few years ago. The housing bubble burst and some neighbors lost their homes. Some were boarded up. Others were sold and the new owners put out “For Rent” signs.


Quaint gave way to crazy. Teenagers fighting. Home invasions. Gunfire.


Boyd, 65, doesn’t want to leave his neighborhood, run off by blight and violence.


Red tags and boarding “can attract the wrong kind of tenants who want to do drugs,” said his wife, Stephanie Boyd. “We want to look like we care.”


Their home in downtown is in a hot spot of the former foreclosure boom. Big cell areas of activity were in north Lansing and downtown.


The result was an increase in single family homes converting to rentals. That old stock, usually more than 50 years old, is prone to lead poisoning. Some have wound up neglected or abandoned or rented out posing serious safety issues for the tenants and those who live around them.


LEAD, MOLD AND MORE


Lansing resident Lavinia Tarpley recently spoke out at an Action of Greater Lansing meeting about housing problems.


She has two relatives living in rentals with poor conditions – leaking sewage, mold, roaches, bed bugs. One describes black mold coating the walls of the basement.


They are afraid to bring up the problems for fear of being evicted.


“People who are subjected to that environment for so long don’t feel anybody is going to do anything for them,” Tarpley said. “It’s unacceptable.


According to the housing coalition’s fiveyear housing initiative report, “most Tri- County communities have little or no rental registry, license, or inspection requirements.”


“One of the most pressing concerns is that rental homes are not regularly inspected to ensure they are safe and free of contaminants such as mold or lead,” the report states.


Yorko said some people endure poor conditions because it’s the only housing they could afford due to poor credit, possible criminal backgrounds or they’re getting on their feet after being homeless.


The rents aren't cheap either. Tarpley's family members pay $600 and $800 a month respectively.


Yorko, who works for the Ingham County Health Department, said there are about 200 children a year with lead poisoning in the county. Areas where the oldest homes are were also high for foreclosures which were converted from single-family owner occupied to rental.



Yorko said she would like to make it a requirement that houses are lead-safe and that be a part of the rental certificate.


She said she knows of a case where “there was a child with very high lead level and the mother is renting,” she said. “The mother fills out an application to remove lead hazards from the home. Her kid is really sick, she doesn’t want to have to move. The state does the investigation to figure out where the kid is getting the lead poisoning. The landlord had a contractor come over to look at something and they saw the state officials. He turned around and sold the house to some guy who lived down the street for a dollar. So therefore he’s no longer obligated to make the property lead safe. She moved across the street.”



Yorko said, “If we had a requirement that the house was lead-safe before the house was certified for a rental, this would never happen.”


Julie Powers, director of the housing coalition, acknowledged the limited resources and staffing in many communities.


She said code compliance oversight will require “community partners” – postal workers, meter readers and neighborhood groups – to report unsafe or questionable properties.


“I wish we could do a better job of educating landlords to be better landlords and renters on how to be a good renter,” Powers said. “It needs to be a community-driven solution. Let’s strip away the blame. We all want safe, decent affordable housing.”


NO FALSE HOPE


Wood said while the committee is still considering how to address the problem, eventually how to pay for it will have to be discussed.


“Council cannot enact an ordinance with an unfunded mandate,” she said. “We have to identify where the money is coming from.”


Reigning in rental safety has been something the city has wrangled with for years.


In 2004 there was a recommendation to have a moratorium on new rentals in order to assess the landscape and establish rules and fees. But that was voted down by the Council.


“I’m very supportive of trying to come up with solutions for neighborhoods, but I want to make sure we aren’t giving a false hope to neighborhoods,” Wood said.


The state of code compliance has declined in those years. The city once had a police detective assigned to housing. There were more code officers and seasonal code officers.


Wood said at the very least the committee could recommend a return to educational classes for landlords, a practice Sanford said hasn’t been in the city since 2004. Landlords with code violations would pay to take educational classes about renting, property upkeep and screening tenants, and in exchange they would be fogiven fines. But the classes require staffing.


“If we don’t plan together then our neighborhoods go down,” said Mitzi Allen, of the Westside Neighborhood Association, who attended the committee meeting. “So this isn’t false hope for us.”


JUST KNOCK THEM ALL DOWN


At 604 Helen Street, two abandoned vehicles sit covered in dirt in the driveway. The ceilings are caving in. The back door is wide open.


Squatters use it at night, said one neighbor, who has seen the glow from cigarette lighters.


“They should just knock them all down,” the neighbor said.



The neighbor lets out a sigh of resignation that the state of properties, rentals and tenants won’t change. They’ve called code enforcement. They’ve called police.


Karen Holmes, at 605 Helen, said she won’t leave. She really can’t afford to. She’s lived there for 35 years.


“I don’t have a lot of money to go anywhere else,” she said.


She knows there’s drug dealings in two of the occupied homes. The empties are opportunities for homeless and those looking to strip copper pipes.


Would licensing help? She doesn’t think so. If property owners can get away without certifications and inspections now, why would licensing be any different?


She points to the back of her house to a shed behind in the backyard a few houses down.


The people who rented that red-tag at the corner? I hear they’re living in the shed back there.


Recently there was a lot of loud arguing and threats from the shed at night. She called the police.


Nothing happened.


“There’s stabbings. There’s gunshots. There’s homeless people living in vacants. If a citizen is telling you it’s going on and you do nothing, what more is a citizen to do?” she said.


General services committee meeting


Nov. 25, 3:30 p.m. City Hall, 124 W. Michigan Ave., Lansing, 10th Floor



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