Rental Property Ordinance

[WonderWoman]

An enormous amount of misinformation about the proposed Rental Property Ordinance has been circulated. By way of this email the board of Charlotte East Community Partners hopes to set the record straight on some of the most egregious falsehoods that those against passage of this ordinance have perpetuated.

A draft of the ordinance is attached. Anyone having questions or wishing to discuss this further should contact Mr. Henry Gunn via email at Gunn127@bellsouth.net or by phone at 704-608-1257. Mr. Gunn served on the stakeholders committee for the drafting of this ordinance, and is a board member of Charlotte East Community Partners and Neighbors for a Safer Charlotte. He is also available to attend neighborhood group meetings, etc upon request.

CMPD already has the means to track down all property owners via existing records systems – FALSE!

The landlord will be held accountable for illegal activity occurring on their property – FALSE!

This ordinance would be costly to implement – FALSE!

FACT – The cost in man hours of what our CMPD officers currently go through to try and track down absentee landlords (sometimes unsuccessfully) is far greater than the cost of implementing this ordinance.

FACT – Numerous cities of like size across the country , including Raleigh, have already enacted similar ordinances, and the one currently being proposed is far less stringent than those in many of those cities.

FACT – The owner of the property can designate another person to be the contact person if he/she wishes to remain anonymous; the ordinance only requires that somebody be registered as the responsible party for each property.

FACT – The real estate industry representatives are paid to look out for the interests of their clients, not public safety or what is in the best interest of the general public, and are attempting to dilute this ordinance to the point which it will not be enforceable or effective.

FACT – This ordinance will protect and/or improve neighborhoods, quality of life, property values and public safety.

FACT – This ordinance will also serve to protect renters who fall victim to slumlords and absentee landlords. For example, currently if a property is condemned the tenants are put out on the street with no assistance, but under the proposed ordinance there is a provision where by the city must relocate tenants who are forced to move due to property condemnation.

FACT – Not only does CMPD support this ordinance but pursuit of it began at their request.

FACT – Passage of this ordinance is in the best interest of Charlotte as a whole, its residents and any responsible landlord.

What can you do…write City Council today and urge them to pass the Rental Property Ordinance, as currently written, without further delay.

Send your emails to: andy@voteandydulin.com; FoxxCharlotte@aol.com; edwin@edwinpeacock.com; Jamesdistrict2@aol.com; lassiter@bellsouth.net; barnesdistrict4@aol.com; n3157w@yahoo.com; pkinsey@carolina.rr.com; sburg346@aol.com; warren@warrencooksey.com; district3_turner@yahoo.com; mayor@ci.charlotte.nc.us

Thank you and please pass this on to other concerned citizens!

[BettyBoop]

Nancy Carter featured Ken Syzmanski the chairman of the Charlotte Apartment Association in her campaign newsletter and he is working as a lobbyist against the residental rental ordinannce. She also introduced him as "longtime affordable housing advocate". Roughly translated: Nancy Carter doesn't support the residential rental ordinance & doesn't agree with regulating section-8. charlotte east does not need more affordable housing. There is already too much. Nancy refuses to address these issues

[PACMAN]

From Paul S. Paskoff, Director of Research & Planning Division -Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department

The annual mandatory registration process as outlined in the proposed rental property ordinance is preferable for three reasons.

1. Establishing a Fair Disorder Risk Threshold: Thresholds that are not based on an objective standard are subject to legal and statistical challenge. The key is to establish an accurate mean. Without an accurate mean, the establishment of “thresholds” is at best a guess and at its worse a meaningless designation that would place unnecessary governmental restraint on an owner. Mandatory registration will produce an accurate and defensible mean based on the entire residential rental market thereby allowing the city to accurately and fairly identify problem properties that exhibit the highest levels of disturbance activity.

2. Immediate Contact Information: Quick access to registration information makes certain that police and other governmental officials can efficiently and quickly contact an owner to notify them that disorder activity is occurring on their property. The sooner we notify the owner, the quicker the owner can take enforcement action to curtail the disorder activity.
If effective action is taken, then in all likelihood the owner’s property will never rise above the mean and be subjected to a mandatory meeting or other provisions of this ordinance. For example, a tenant is arrested for selling drugs out of a rental unit. In this case, if the owner is registered, then we can quickly notify the owner thereby expediting the owner’s enforcement action pursuant to the lease.

3. Accurate Contact Information: Currently, police have no accurate way to efficiently and consistently locate the owner. If the owner is a corporation it may be weeks, if ever, before we ever get a response. During this time period, the tenant not only continues to participate in disorder activity that adversely affects the community, but also continues to generate disturbance activity that ultimately may result in governmental action to seek forfeiture of the property. In addition, reliable contact information will assist the city in quickly bringing a stubborn owner to the table to work on a remedial action plan.

The alternate proposal offered by the Greater Charlotte Apartment Association, including reliance on Register of Deeds information and property tax data, does not always provide owner contact information. A subcommittee of the Rental Property Ordinance Stakeholders Group met with Register of Deeds David Granberry. Mr. Granberry explained that to obtain the owners information from his Office it would be best to have City Council adopt an ordinance mandating the information to be collected (on a separate form). The Register of Deeds would then charge $14 per page to record this new document. It was explained by Mr. Granberry that at the Register of Deeds Office property owners do not list their contact telephone numbers. Although an identification number is required, the Register of Deeds does not verify identification numbers. Mr. Granberry recommended that our subcommittee meet with the Mecklenburg County Tax Assessor for the owner information we were seeking.
The Mecklenburg County Property Assessment & Land Records Management Office (PALRM) is likewise not always reliable for the property address, owner name, and owner address. Mr. Eric Anderson, PALRM, informed the CMPD “At the present time, PALRM does not collect such information as telephone or fax numbers and email addresses except in the case of appeals. We have neither the means, manpower, resources nor the processes to do so, especially in a budget year that seems poised to present significant limitations on new and existing initiatives and personnel.”

Currently the CMPD works with property owners and the community to eliminate nuisance properties (drugs, liquor, prostitute, and/or gambling houses) and with problem businesses, i.e., bars, hotels, etc. The CMPD has one staff member, a nuisance abatement officer (civilian position), whose job is to contact the owners of nuisance properties.
For example, when drugs are found on a rental property and the nuisance abatement officer is made aware of it she sends a letter to the property owner advising him or her of the situation. The nuisance abatement officer mails an average of 100 letters per quarter. Of the letters the nuisance abatement officer sends, approximately 10% are returned as “Returned to Sender: Unclaimed or Return to Sender: Unable to Forward.” In some of these situations (on average two or three), the nuisance abatement officer has talked with the property owner or they have talked to her after failing to accept the delivery of the letter.

While we do not have definitive current costs in man-hours for the work performed by the nuisance abatement officer and patrol officers in locating owners, it is significant. Patrol officers, many times, are also looking for the property owners resulting from concerns they have. For example, there may people hanging out on the property that patrol officers feel certain should not be there. These officers need confirmation from the property owner. Officers may suspect illegal activity occurring at the rental property and they wish to obtain the names of the tenants or there has been a recent break in and officers need to contact the owner. Officers will periodically seek help from the nuisance abatement officer in locating property owners when they have exhausted their resources trying to locate and speak with the owner.

A mandatory universal registration requirement for rental property owners would permit the CMPD to efficiently and consistently locate the owner. In addition, a universal registration requirement would be of benefit to many City of Charlotte departments, including, but not limited to, the Economic and Neighborhood Development Department (Property Code Division), the Charlotte Fire Department, and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Utilities.