Because the current system doesn't encourage enough people to dump their shit on the street, that's why

From the Herald-Sun:

Solid Waste Management Director Donald Long is telling elected officials he thinks it's "imperative" for Durham to emulate other North Carolina cities and begin charging residents a monthly collection fee for garbage and recycling.

Long said the move would enable his department to reduce its annual demand for property tax revenues, which in fiscal 2011-12 will cover $12.5 million of a $21.3 million budget.

One listserv correspondent wrote:

My initial response to this proposal is: What a terrible idea. We see how badly this fee-for-service system works with yard waste. When it became fee based, people opted out. To make garbage & recycling fee-for-service based in a community such as ours, with a 50% rental housing rate, is a recipe for disaster. What happens if residents don't pay the fee? Their garbage isn't picked up? Whose responsibility is it to see the fee is paid: the residents? The property owner? The property manager? If a resident moves, does their trash fee move with them or would they have to pay again at a new property? Who will insure that fees are paid and trash is collected for each household? What happens if a property manager or rental owner goes belly-up and these fees aren't paid? How will the current legislation pending that would prohibit rental registries and limit inspections impact problems with trash pick-up, non-payment of fees? What happens if owners decide not to pay? Who will clean up after the inevitable surge of illegal dumping? Handle complaints from businesses who find other people's garbage in their commercial bins? Will animal control increase their responses to rat and pest infestations?

Oh, you mean like this rental property at 110 E. Markham Ave?


Yeah, Durham really needs to give its shitty landlords more of an incentive to be fuckups.

(And out of curiosity, i'm not going to report this to One-Call. It's on the Roxboro side of the building, and i imagine that there are at least a couple of dozen city employees, and at least one or two council members, who drive past this pile of shit daily on their way home from work. Let's see how long it takes for one of them to report this.)

UPDATE 6/2: So the trash was gone when i checked at 8 pm last night. No idea if the landlords will be picking up the tipping fees (and penalties for mixing yard waste, electronics, and recyclables in with the busted up furniture and used paint containers), or if that privilege will be passed on to the schlubs who pay their taxes and sort their trash because it's the right thing to do.

Continue reading Because the current system doesn't encourage enough people to dump their shit on the street, that's why

Why we love landlords

In January, Mr. Jarvis began working as director of investor relations for Brewer Caldwell, a property management firm that had been approached by the CBI Group, a real estate fund based in Calgary, Alberta. In its first foray into the American market, CBI is buying 175 rental houses in Phoenix.

One of them belonged to Mary Lou and Jorge Aguilar, who purchased it new for $111,000 in 1999. Three years ago, after a series of financial difficulties, they refinanced for $185,000 for reasons they no longer understand. “Our lender talked a pretty picture,” Mrs. Aguilar said bitterly.

When the couple’s mortgage payment adjusted to $1,242 a month, they fell behind and ended up in foreclosure. They now pay $1,014 in rent, which they say is bearable.

Still, their feelings are mixed. “It’s not our house anymore; it’s someone else’s,” said Mrs. Aguilar, who works for the state welfare department.

For CBI, the deal is sweet. At that rent, it would recoup the $52,000 it paid for the house in about five years. “This type of deal is absolutely not available in Canada,” said Jarrett Zielinski, a CBI executive. “No city here has fallen by 50 percent, the way Phoenix has.”

So, the lender was unable to work out a deal with the owners that could have knocked the mortgage payments back down to the $1000 or so a month that these guys are now paying in rent, the house got sold at a $130K loss, and an out of country fund is siphoning the profits off to Canada. How in the world does this benefit the community?

Continue reading Why we love landlords

Landlord registration

One of the the things i wrote in an email to the PAC2 list discussion on landlord registration recently was this:

I cannot imagine that Raleigh is the first municipality in the nation to
implement a program of this kind.

Personally, i'd prefer to see the data that comes in from Raleigh (and
other cities that may have similar programs) before i start throwing
around blanket generalizations like "this can never work."

Well, whaddayaknow?
Here's my favorite example:

New Jersey Landlord Registration Act - New Jersey Landlord Identity Law – N.J.S.A. 46:8-27 thru 37

The New Jersey Landlord Registration Act
The law requires landlords who rent (NON-OWNER OCCUPIED) houses, apartments, or buildings to register certain information with the clerk of the city or town where the building is located. If your building contains three or more apartments, the landlord also must register with the

New Jersey Department of Community Affairs (Bureau of Housing Inspection, PO Box 810, Trenton, New Jersey 08625-0810



By law, every landlord of a dwelling, except owner-occupied premises with not more than two rental units, must file with the clerk of the municipality in which the residential property is situated, or with the Bureau of Housing Inspection in the Department of Community Affairs, a certificate of registration.
N.J.S.A. 46:8-28.
The certificate must contain the following information:

1. the name and address of the record owners. If such owners are a partnership, the name of all general partners. If such owners are a corporation, the name and address of the registered agent and corporate officers;
2. if the address of any record owner is not located in the county in which the premises is located, the name and address of a person who resides in the county in which the premises are located and is authorized to accept notices from a tenant and to issue receipt therefore and to accept service of process on behalf of the record owner;
3. the name and address of the managing agent of the premises;
4. the name and addresses, including the dwelling unit, apartment or room number of the superintendent, janitor, custodian or other individual employed by the record owner to provide regular maintenance service;
5. the name, address and telephone number of an individual representative of the record owner or managing agent who may be reached or contacted at any time in the event of an emergency; and
6. the name and address of every holder of a recorded mortgage on the premises.

The landlord must display this information at the property in a place where tenants can see it, and the landlord must give this information in writing to each tenant. Cite: N.J.S.A. 46:8-28 and 29.

In addition to the filing of the registration statement, landlords are required to provide each tenant with a copy of the registration certificate.

Failure to register. LANDLORDS TAKE NOTE! The registration law prevents a landlord from evicting you if the building is not properly registered.

If your landlord has not registered the property or has not given you a copy of the registration, the court cannot enter a judgment to evict you in favor of the landlord. In most eviction cases where a landlord has not registered, the judge will postpone hearing the case to give the landlord time to register. Once the landlord registers, the court can then hear the case and enter a judgment for eviction. The postponement can give you extra time to move or to obtain the rent you may owe. Some judges do not follow this procedure and will enter a judgment anyway, if the landlord agrees to register the property later. This practice is clearly wrong. Cite: N.J.S.A. 46:8-33 and Iuso v. Capehart, 140 N.J. Super. 209 (App. Div. 1976).

If your landlord is not registered, you can file a complaint in Superior Court or municipal court. A landlord can be fined up to $500 for failing to register. Cite: N.J.S.A. 46:8-35

If there is any change in any of this information, a landlord must file an amended registration with the Bureau of Housing Inspection or, in the case of a one-or two- family dwelling, with the clerk of the municipality, within 20 days, correct with the information posted in the building and notify each tenant in writing 7 days after filing. No fee is charged by the Bureau for the filing of amended registration statement

In court, a judgment for possession cannot be entered if the landlord has not complied with this registration requirement. Non-receipt of the statement is almost a standard defense by tenants who are represented by competent counsel to avoid an immediate judgment of possession. The court has the authority to stay the proceedings for 90 days to allow the landlord to come into compliance. If the landlord has not come into compliance within this 90 day period, the landlord's action for possession will be dismissed.

Durham landlords have it pretty easy, from what i can tell.

Continue reading Landlord registration

Whiners

As regular DE readers know, i like a good whine as much as anyone in town. But the spectacle of a bunch of landlords on the PAC mailing lists yesterday whining about how difficult it is to get good tenants in response to the suggestion by a couple of local activists that Durham ought to keep on eye on how Raleigh's new landlord registry program was too much, even for me.

As my daddy used to say, nobody's holding a gun to your head forcing you to be a landlord. If it's really that much trouble, get out of the business. You might even have more respect for yourself in the morning.

Continue reading Whiners

OK, i'm back

Haven't quite finished the revamping of the visual aspects, but that's coming. We did manage to finish the kitchen redo, i've yanked most of the invasive Chinese privet out of the back, cleaned out the garage (bad news? Philco Recycling Services, the guys who used to be in the Whole Foods parking lot recycling everything one Saturday a month, seem to have bailed, and i've got a car full of styrofoam and plastic that needs a new home) we have a pretty good idea of what we want to do with a deck in the back yard, and i got all of the Steely Dan vinyl re-digitized with the new turntable, and it sounds great.

I was kinda hoping that Durham would get its shit together while i was gone, so i wouldn't feel any pressure to come back, if you know what i mean. That detoxing can get kinda addictive in its own right.

But, no such luck.

Kevin's already been writing about the earlier this week about noting that Durham has $1.2 million in unpaid fines that it isn;t collecting. These fines have been levied against landlords for various code violations. The city isn't collecting the money because it can't use it to balance the budget, but instead has to turn it over to Durham Public Schools. So collecting it hasn't been a high priority.

Here's a clue for our elected and appointed officials.

Most of us don't know the difference between the various branches of local government. It's all "Durham" to us. And those of us who do understand the difference? We don't give a fuck. The fines aren't to help the school system pay for after-school programs, although that's a nice benefit. The fines are to discourage rotten landlord behavior. And for those of us who live next to houses that are owned by rotten landlords, you can't fine them fast enough to start changing their behavior. Hopefully Tom Bonfield gets it, and rather quickly, how bad this makes the city look.

Meanwhile, some moron with a couple of pit bulls let them run loose on the greenway between the Duke Park and Trinity Park neighborhoods about 2 weeks ago, where they attacked and killed another dog being walked by a 10 year old.

Lovely.

Even lovelier?

The County Animal Control Deparatment managed to take one of the dogs into custody, but not the other one. As of last week, the second dog was still considered to be at-large. I've talked to a number of people who use the greenway regularly who have stopped using it. The county is pretty lucky that only a dog was killed.

No one has claimed the dog that was picked up, so there is apparently no way to find out who owned the dog that is still loose. In fact, when i attended the meeting of the Animal Control Advisory Board last Tuesday night, the director of the shelter said that she could not be certain that the dog had not been turned in by its owner to be euthanized.

I asked that, since the shelter puts down approximately 80 dogs per week, how many pit bulls matching that description might have been put down over the past week. She couldn't tell me that, only that about 60% of the dogs euthanized at the shelter were pit bulls.

I was kinda surprised that almost all of the discussion at the ACAB centered around the 911 response to the emergency callas placed during the dog attack. Yes, clearly there's some protocols that need to be changed at 911 when it comes to dangerous animal issues. The county only has one Animal Control officer on duty during the hours of 5pm to 8am, and on the weekends. That's a lot of hours to have that minimal coverage, and it makes sense to me to have the police brought into the picture more readily when AC officers might be otherwise occupied, as apparently the officer on duty two Mondays ago was.

But that's not the only problem here. There's was lots of heated discussion on various local listservs about potential solutions, but pretty much everybody agreed that there's an abundance of "irresponsible" pet owners in Durham. (Personally, i think irresponsible to too gentle a word for a great many of those folks, but i'll use it for this discussion.) There's a lot more that needs to be done in that area. Moving the animal license fee over to the tax people is a very small first step that will, hopefully, get the number of unregistered pets in Durham county down from the 60% or so level (you read that right - Cindy Bailey at Animal Control estimates the number of unlicensed dogs and cats in Durham at around 60% of the total population). But then what?

What penalties accrue to not registering your animal? Or not getting it vaccinated? Or letting it run around, intact, making more unwanted puppies? Or worse, breeding your dog for fighting? Let's not pretend that isn't a huge problem in Durham.

Here's another thing. I don't know how detailed the minutes of the ACAB get, or even if they get published on the county website. Last i looked i couldn't find them.

The director of the animal shelter raised a concern during the discussion about 911 that getting the police involved in potentially dangerous animal situations is going to lead to more innocent animals being shot by poorly trained officers.

Physician, heal thyself. Apparently, you already knew about this incident at the time you were complaining about the police being involved in dangerous animal situations because it might lead to innocent animals being killed. Personally, i'm willing to take that risk, if it means that the likelihood of some kid getting mauled by someone's fighting dogs is minimized. But really, the irony of the animal shelter director, who's just suspended an employee for putting down the wrong dog, complaining about the risk that the police might get trigger happy is just too delicious.

Let's fix the real damn problems first, then we can worry about the hypotheticals.

Continue reading OK, i'm back

Memo to Keith Upchurch

From: Mr. Dependable
Re: Rick Soles article

Suggested followups - Perhaps you could interview some of Mr. Soles' tenants to gain their perspective on the kinds of properties he manages, or some of the neighbors of those properties to get a sense of his contributions to the greater community regarding issues of property maintenance and appearance, criminal activity in the units he manages, etc.

Get back to me, i might be able to point you in the right direction.

Continue reading Memo to Keith Upchurch

Raleigh requires landlords to register

We're going to be talking about this tonight on Shooting The Bull. But if you've been reading the N&O the past week or two, you've probably seen some stories on the PROP (Probationary Rental Cccupancy Permit) Ordinance.

In essence, if you own residential rental property in Raleigh, come January 1, you'll have to register that property with the city. The cost is going to be $30/year for the first unit in a bulding, $10/year for each additional unit. So a duplex will cost 40 bucks a year, or $20/unit, which comes out to a buck sixty seven a month, or just over a nickel a day. A quadplex will be 60 bucks a year, or $15/unit. Which comes out to a dollar and a quarter a month, or a little over 4 cents a day.

I'm still a little unclear how an apartment complex is calculated. Does each building in the complex have one unit at $30/year, or is there just one $30 unit for the whole complex? We should be able find out the answer to that and other questions tonight.

Unsurprisingly, the ordinance is generating grumbling among landlords in the City of Oaks. Here's my favorite quote:

Gary Rooth said the property management company he uses has already informed him it would charge higher management fees to comply with such a registration requirement.

"I'll send a letter to tenants explaining that they will pay this fee," said Rooth, who owns 45 rental properties across the city. "I don't do this as a charity."

I of course take Mr. Rooth at his word. He's not doing this for charity. He's doing this to make a profit. In other words, it's a business, just like a restaurant or a law firm.

Now, if the results of the business practices of certain landlords and property managers results in increased costs to the city and county for things like additional police activity, additional trash pickup, additional housing inspectors, additional animal control officers and patrols, isn't it reasonable to expect the taxpayers of the city to seek solutions that place the burden of the additional costs on those who are creating the demand for the additional services? Isn't it reasonable for the taxpayers of the city to require that classes of business meet certain requirements in order to do business in that city?

In Durham, people who solicit funds by going door-to-door are required to purchase a peddler's permit. Want to hang a shingle offering your consultant services? Need to buy a business license. Want to run a restaurant? All kinds of licenses required to do that.

Why should landlords be a protected class of business owners? Especially when the ones that do it poorly generate a burden for the rest of the taxpayers of the city. If your restaurant consistently requires police presence because people are fighting or dealing drugs on your site, guess what? You won't be in business very long. Because landlords deal in housing, may not be practical to shut down a landlord's business so easily, because innocent people may be harmed by losing their residence. But this new ordinance seems to me to navigate the potential hazards quite well. In fact, i predict that landlords who clean up their act in order to avoid facing the penalties they can incur by violating the ordinance will do better in the long run than those whose only response to the ordinance will be to bitch about it.

Got a question you want to hear discussed on this topic tonight on Shooting The Bull? Send an email to ShootingTheBull AT gmail DOT com.

Continue reading Raleigh requires landlords to register

Holding landlords accountable

I'll have more to say about this later in the week, and on Shooting the Bull on Sunday night, but this N&O editorial makes some of the basic points.

New rules coming up for a vote on the full City Council would require that all Raleigh rental properties be registered with the city. Their owners would pay an annual fee of $30. Own more than one unit in a building? The charge is $10 a year for each extra unit. Importantly, police could fine owners $100 for loud parties.

Despite complaints that the annual fee amounts to a de facto rent increase, these sums are reasonable and well-targeted. The money will pay for a staff to find and respond to problems related to the PROP ordinance. And all rental properties will be on record, as they should.

This is what the ordinance has needed all along, a dedicated staff, a complete list of rentals and some teeth. Solid, problem-solving enforcement will help bring more properties into good repair, and induce problem tenants to behave better. That helps renters, unit owners and their neighbors -- at 3 a.m. and all the time.

Wanna be a landlord? Guess what? You're now in business. And, like all businesses, you need a business license.

Got a problem with that?

Let me get the world's smallest violin out again.

Continue reading Holding landlords accountable

Meanwhile, in Raleigh

From the N&O:

The city police sergeant whose Southeast Raleigh rental houses repeatedly draw fellow officers on drug, prostitution and assault calls has filed for bankruptcy.

Court records show Sgt. Tommy Newman of Wake Forest and his wife, Deborah, will surrender seven houses and lots in Southeast Raleigh, plus an eighth in Zebulon.

On all those houses, they owe nearly $4,500 in property tax, and $22,000 in federal and state income tax.

Newman, a 24-year veteran of the Raleigh police force, declined to comment Tuesday.

His Southeast Raleigh properties are frequent topics at community meetings, where outraged residents describe a steady stream of prostitutes and drug dealers.

Newman earned $79,247 in 2007 and $119,185 the year before from his rental properties, his bankruptcy filing showed.

The story's hook is that the landlord happens to be a police officer, whose neglect of his properties, which appear to have netted him just under $200K the past two years, costs the city a lot of extra money in police resources.

Many Durhamites will recognize Tommy Newman's actalikes, landlords who live out of town, or out of state, and whose continued neglect and lack of involvement in the community places a burden, financial and otherwise, on the residents and taxpayers of our town. It doesn't matter to us whether they're police officers in their town or ours, or just former Duke students who happened to pick up a few distressed properties during their time in Durham 20 years ago and have been milking them for cash flow ever since.

Blight grew so bad at a row of Newman's duplexes on East Jones Street that the city bought them for $320,000 after photographing holes in the walls stuffed with squashed beer cans.

. . .

Since then, the council has considered adding tenants' criminal activity to a set of rules that can trigger fines and mandatory classes for landlords -- a debate that continued at City Hall on Tuesday.

Kudos to the Raleigh City Council for taking steps to place the financial burden for their actions on these landlords. Let's hope some members of our own City Council are paying attention.

Continue reading Meanwhile, in Raleigh

Broken windows theory

Avondale Drive
Interesting doings at this house over the weekend. I've gotten conflicting reports from some of the immediate neighbors as to whether or not the tenants actually bailed on Friday. There was a large pile of appliances and junk in the backyard today on my to work, so i'm inclined to think they're gone. The story is that they kicked their dogs out into the street on their way out. Again, i'm trying to confirm this with Animal control who, according the paint crew at my place on Friday, had to send 4 officers to the scene to corral to the poor animals, who will probably end up being euthanized since they're completely lacking in socialization. If only any of the complaints about mistreatment had been taken seriously over the past couple of years, maybe they could have been rescued. And if only the landlord had stopped by to look at their property once or twice over the past five years to see how badly it was being trashed. I guess as long as that check comes in every month, it doesn't matter what damage is being done to the rest of the community.

Anyway, i'm working on a longer piece inspired by one of the commenters over at Gary's place on the unconscious assumption of privilege that's so prevalent among many classes in our culture, in this case the class of people who drive automobiles.

And rumor has it that the Herald-Sun has picked up on the story of the city not being able to keep cars out of Duke Park on the weekend, which apparently happened again yesterday.

If only i didn't have to work for a living.

Continue reading Broken windows theory

Cleveland-Holloway

Speaking of Kevin, he damn near hit a grand slam in his response to the Indy cover story on "gentrification" in the Cleveland-Holloway neighborhood.

The only thing missing, in my mind, is a real indictment of the true culprits here, which are the landlords who own the 90% of the homes in C-H that are rentals and who, to a large extent, refuse to reinvest their rental incomes into properly maintaining their homes. The rents they charge are more than adequate to allow for reasonable maintenance of their properties. On the other hand, Mosi Secret barely touched on the topic of slumlords. Which really detracted from the power of his article.

Continue reading Cleveland-Holloway

Because legislators are cheaper than building repairs?

Rumor has it that Kevin Davis does, in fact, have a day job. Hard to be sure, because the guy's blog is everywhere you want to be.

Yesterday, he broke this news:

Housing inspections kiboshed? One of the real eyebrow-raisers in this year's short session is SB 1507 -- a bill that's passed the Senate and is due up in the House that would, if passed, effectively ban the City's ability to conduct regular inspections of all rental housing stock in Durham.

Housing inspections have been a much-ballyhooed and talked-about topic over the past year; the Council didn't provide the funding requested by Neighborhood Improvement Services last year, though NIS has taken a voluntary, opt-in approach with landlords instead. (I'm suspecting those abusers of rental property responsibility, our friendly neighborhood slumlords, aren't lining up to be test subjects.)

A staggering 99% of housing code violations, according to the City, occur in rental housing. Yet SB 1507 would prevent cities from distinguishing between rental and owner-occupied housing, or between single- and multi-family rental units, when implementing an inspection program. Obviously, this provision -- which appears in a bill that's had the strong support of the realtor and apartment industries -- makes it far less feasible (i.e., more expensive) for cities to undertake such an inspection program.

Cities could still target "blighted" areas or those receiving CDBG grants from the Federal government for regular housing inspections, but otherwise inspections would only be allowed where "probable cause" exists based on the presence of a housing complaint or a landlord having a track record of violations.

The City reports that the N.C. League of Municipalities opposes the bill, and that the state's tenants rights organization is negotiating with the real estate industry over this bill. Still, it passed the Senate easily and a concerted effort is needed to avoid this bill sailing through the House and gubernatorial offices.

(emphasis added)
So, 99% of all housing complaints come from rental stock. I'm willing to bet that some variation of the 80/20 rule holds sway here as well: The vast majority of those complaints are generated by a small number of slumlords. But rather than deal with the problem, or allow the city to deal with the problem, the landlord lobby decides its better to protect their profits than be good citizens.

And don't go all Fourth Amendment on me, either. you don't see restauranteurs lobbying to have health inspections banned on the grounds that their kitchens are private property, do you? You don't see the hotel and motel industry saying their buildings don't need to have the fire marshalls come through every once in a while to check on the sprinkler systems and make sure the exit paths are marked and clear. And Cherie K. Berry sure makes it a point of making sure every elevator in the state is functioning properly, doesn't she?

So what's the difference between those industries and the home rental industry? I mean besides the fact that neglected and decrepit rental housing stock blights the entire community? Why shouldn't municipalities have the right, if they choose, to require that rental properties meet certain community standards? Why does the landlord lobby need to go to Raleigh to make sure that communities don't have that right?

The only answer is because it's cheaper in the short term to buy legislators than it is to invest in your rental property. Long term, after the slumlords have made the community completely undesirable, who knows? Maybe they'll be swooping in to pick up those same properties in preparation for gentrification, at bargain prices.

Gah.

Continue reading Because legislators are cheaper than building repairs?

Bad tenants, worse landlord

The latest in a long line of noisy, inconsiderate, dog abusing tenants in the house directly behind mine moved out sometime between Monday afternoon and Wednesday afternoon. I've been communicating through a third party with the property manager about the dog tied up to the "carport" 24/7, as well as the large number of motor vehicles brought into the back yard for "repairs."

Here's a shot of what they left behind.


By my count, these are the 5th consecutive tenants over the past 6 years to tie a dog (or dogs) up to the rickety "carport" poles and leave him (or them) there to bark and howl all night. They were the firs, though, to try to run some sort of car repair business out of the yard.

Here's a couple of shots of some trash that made it to my side of the fence.




I'm going to try to meet with the property manager over the next couple of days to start working through this problem. If i don't getresults, i'll be posting some more about this, including names and addresses of the property manager and the property owner, who is really the problem here.

Continue reading Bad tenants, worse landlord