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Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Attack on Affordable Housing Widens

Please click onto the comments for the story.

posted by Bob at Wednesday, February 21, 2007

4 Comments:

Blogger Bob said...

In St. Paul, inspectors plan to home in on rental units
While officials believe more inspections will clean up the housing stock, activists fear people may be displaced.
By Myron P. Medcalf, StaTribuneLast update: February 20, 2007 – 9:51 PM


Almeta Boxer fears eviction
Almeta Boxer cares for her grandchildren in a single-family house she rents in St. Paul's Frogtown neighborhood. The heat upstairs doesn't work, she can't seem to get her landlords to make adequate repairs and she says she'd like to move.
But she doesn't want to be forced out -- and she fears that could happen with the city's newly expanded inspection program.

"If they leave well enough alone, we'll be OK," she said. Later, she added: "Housing in the city is very bad. You have to give us some respect to live with dignity."

Under the new program starting this spring, city inspectors will begin routinely look for code violations in single-family and duplex rentals -- as they have for years with multi-family buildings. Inspectors said the new program aims to assure tenants that they have a safe place to live.

"We're going to do everything we can to allow people to live in these buildings while corrections are being made," Fire Marshal Steve Zaccard said. "We're in the occupancy business and our goal is to get compliance."

But the prospect of more inspections worries some community activists who, though concerned about unsafe housing, think families may be forced from their homes if landlords don't address problems.

Caty Royce, head of the Community Stabilization Project, says St. Paul shouldn't have started the program until community groups were ready to deal with potential displacement.

"We could be looking at wholesale, forced homelessness," Royce said.

Until now, city officials have inspected single-family and duplex rentals only when they got complaints (owner-occupied rentals will continue to be exempt from inspection). Inspectors do admit there's a possibility that some people will be evicted, since St. Paul will be inspecting up to 10,000 more units.

Officials will try to give landlords adequate time for necessary repairs, said Zaccard, whose inspectors will lead the program.

He added that as long as landlords make repairs before an assigned "vacate date," tenants will be allowed to stay.

Under the revised program, properties that receive the lowest of three ratings will be inspected every year, while those getting the best rating will be inspected every five years.

City officials say it's unclear how many unlicensed landlords and unregistered rental properties there are in St. Paul, so they have difficulty predicting what the impact of the new inspections will be on renters.

"I think it would be naive to say that no one's going to be displaced," said Dick Lippert, a code enforcement inspector who has been in charge of single-family and duplex rental inspections prompted by complaints.

Most St. Paul tenants who lived in the estimated 400 properties condemned last year found other places to live, he said.

City Council Member Dan Bostrom, who sponsored the expanded inspections program, said that residents also expressed concerns about losing their homes when he pitched similar inspection policy changes in the 1990s.

"It's almost like they're suggesting that we should cut some slack to some of the irresponsible landlords," he said. "All of the houses have to meet code."

Legal remedies available

Boa Lee, a community organizer for the District 7 Planning Council, said that her fears about rental housing conditions in Frogtown escalated last summer after seven people were injured in a fire. Inspectors later discovered that 27 people had been living in the fourplex.

Lee said that more than half of the homes in Frogtown are rentals, some of which offer substandard living conditions. She said that some of the neighborhood's immigrants may not know that they don't have to live under certain conditions.

"We think [expanded inspections are] something that needed to be done," she said.

Tenants should know that they have legal remedies for some housing concerns, such as a tenant remedy action by which a judge can force a landlord to make repairs, said Laura Jelinek, a lawyer with the Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services.

Her organization has been successful in getting many owners to cover hotel costs for tenants while they're making needed repairs. Jelinek said she hopes the new St. Paul program will encourage tenants to learn more about their rights.

"We've wondered if more people will [need] our services at Legal Aid," she said.

Despite her own housing battles, Boxer doesn't want the city to change its inspection policies; she's already moved three times in six years, due to overcrowding and home sales, she said.

At the same time she's not sure how to get her landlords, who own dozens of metro-area properties, to fix up her place.

Her take on rentals, based on her experiences? "None of them are really up to code," she said.


Myron P. Medcalf • 651-298-1546 • mmedcalf@startribune.com

7:44 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

sounds like Caty is mad she hasn't gotten any money. Ya wouldn't do everything ya should do with it if ya got it.

your just another pig at the troth like so many people connected with our City government

8:05 AM  
Blogger Bob said...

You know it is disturbing they don't have a plan for displaced people when a home is condemened. I brought this up at Helgens TEA PARTY at the Bruce Vento elementry.

Bottom line they don't give a Damn!They want life miserable for low income people so they leave the City.Why develope a plan for displaced people when the objective is to get rid of them.

The City is reducing the number of Low Income people in the City to save tax dollars on social services and at the same time bring up the property tax base within the City.

They are using code enforcement,and the police to assist them in this goal.

So, Almeta be careful when you draw an alliance with evil people.

Caty Royce, you and your non-profit are a sad Joke

8:59 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

They do have a plan. That plan is to keep the poor on the move so much by constantly condemning and throwing them out, that eventually they just get so tired they jsut leave and find someplace more tolerant to live.

12:02 PM  

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