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"Hopefully we will produce legislation that is unanimously
supported by all [affected] parties," Council president
Christopher Coons told the most recent meeting of the advisory
committee working to shape the ordinance.
There
appears to be agreement that accomplishing the purposes for the
ordinance is predicated on establishing a registration system
which enables authorities to identify the owners of properties
and provides police, code enforcement officers and others with
an immediate link to a local person responsible for what goes on
at the property.
Police
officers frequently are unable to locate someone, especially at
night, to let them into an apartment unit or deal with other
emergency situations, said Sgt. Keith Sparks of the county
police.
At the
most basic level, mandatory registration, with a penalty for
deliberate non-compliance would give county officials a handle,
which they do not presently have, on how many rental units there
are and where they are located.
Beyond
that, it will enable the county to develop an inspection system
to determine the extent, if any, of property-code violations at
each one, according to Steven Peuquet, of the University of
Delaware, who chairs the subcommittee dealing with that aspect
of the proposed ordinance. Depending on how it fares in an
inspection, a property could be granted what amounts to a county
'seal of approval' or placed on probation.
Since it
would be virtually impossible to maintain a continual watch over
all such properties in the unincorporated areas of the county,
where the ordinance would apply, registration would provide am
objective method to determine how frequently a given property
should be inspected. Enforcement officers "will concentrate on
the problem properties" and visit the others at wider intervals
-- perhaps annually -- determined by random sampling unless a
specific complaint is received, he said.
Even so,
the subcommittee has concluded, there is a likelihood that it
will be necessary to increase the size of the code-enforcement
staff. A penalty system could be used to help pay for the
inspections and the officers who conduct them.
Discussion at the Oct. 31 meeting centered on setting penalties
for repeat violations at level sufficient to make it more
attractive to correct violations. There is general agreement
that some landlords in urban areas rack up multiple violations
and regard penalties, when levied, as a cost of doing business.
Coons
said the inspection system should be arranged so that its
impartiality is obvious. "We don't want to have any owner able
to say we're picking on them," he said.
Another
key feature intended to be part of the ordinance is establishing
a method whereby landlords can be held responsible for keeping
certain known criminals out of their properties -- either by
evicting them or not renting to them in the first place.
Wilmington and Dover have both adopted voluntary 'crime-free
multi-unit housing' programs, modeled on one developed in Mesa,
Ariz., and in use to varying degrees in several other U.S. and
Canadian cities.
Even
without such a program, "landlords are between a rock and a hard
place," said Fred Quercetti, president of the Delaware Apartment
Association. They are required to screen tenants to avoid
renting to certain felons, but have no central source from which
to obtain criminal background information. Delaware does have a
statewide system, which can be access for a fee, but it does not
provide information concerning crimes and other states and
Pennsylvania, for one, keeps its records on a county-by-county
basis.
A
landlord can be held civilly liable if he rents, for instance,
to a known rapist and that person later victimizes another
tenant in the same apartment complex.
Sparks
noted that background checks available to the general public do
not turn up records on juvenile offenders while they "are the
source of most of our problems" in certain apartment complexes.
A more
fundamental problem with tenant screening, according to Chris
White, of Community Legal Aid, involves "where is a felon who
has served his time going to live" if the past crime bans him
from renting an apartment. "I agree [that] we don't want bad
people living in our neighborhoods, but housing is a basic
necessity and even bad people have to live somewhere," he said.
Discussion at the meeting questioned whether the degree of
undesirability might depend on the nature of a felon's crime. It
was asked whether someone who had committed a violent crime,
such as assault, might be barred while one convicted of
something like passing a bad check might not. Also raised were
the matter of whether other tenants should be notified of a
felon's presence, whether a misdemeanor of a physical nature
should also be a reason to bar someone and whether the sanction
should be imposed at the time of arrest or await the result of a
trial.
A third
subcommittee is drafting a list of code violations which
adversely affect tenants as part of an effort to education
renters about their housing rights. Made part of the lease
document, posted in larger complexes and distributed in brochure
form, it will list a variety of code violations with information
about which public agency to contact to remedy the specific
situation.
Here,
too, there is a problem, the group was told. George Lossé,
president of the Claymont Community Coalition, said it is common
practice for landlords to offer tenants cheaper rents in return
for their putting up with some substandard conditions. "They
literally can't afford to complain," he said.
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