ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, June 15, 1996 TAG: 9606170078
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
MEMO: ***CORRECTION***
Published correction ran on June 19, 1996.
A Saturday story incorrectly identified the president of the Greater
Raleigh Court Civic League. Michael Urbanski became president June 1.
When Roanoke City Council takes up a rental inspection plan Monday afternoon, it will be far weaker than versions proposed over the last few months.
Gone is a $75 fine for landlords who won't cooperate with regular property inspections and whose tenants complain about building code violations.
Gone, too: Red stickers the landlords would have been required to post on properties that failed inspection.
Landlords' list of all their properties.
Regular yearly inspections.
Dan Pollock, the city's housing development coordinator, acknowledges the proposed plan is easier on landlords now, but says, "It certainly is better than nothing, which we've had."
Eighty landlords formed an organization to fight the regulation and won a landlord's seat on the residents' committee that drafted it.
Others on the committee wanted to impose a $75 fine on landlords who refuse to cooperate. The city administration removed the provision.
"My understanding was that the city attorney didn't think that owners who didn't cooperate could be treated differently from owners who did cooperate," said Legal Aid lawyer Nancy Brock, a member of the panel that labored all winter and spring on the plan.
She's not totally displeased, but she said: "It's not the design that we had spent a lot of time going over. It's been a little frustrating to spend that kind of time in committee working on details and see that not be a meaningful endeavor."
City Attorney Wil Dibling was out of his office until Monday and could not be reached for comment.
"There's a concern that at this point that there's not a lot of teeth," said Tony Stavola, president of the Raleigh Court Civic League. "The minority of landlords who may present a problem may be the ones least likely to comply with the program."
He asked city staffers how they will know when a property has changed tenants and needs a certificate of compliance, "and we couldn't really get any answers."
An estimated 5,000 rental units in the 12 oldest and poorest neighborhoods encircling and including downtown Roanoke would be targeted for inspections.
Landlords in those sections would be required to have their property inspected and to receive a "certificate of compliance" that their property meets code - but only when a vacancy has occurred. Roanoke never has inspected rental housing except on complaint. Lynchburg, Salem and several other Virginia cities have done systematic inspections of rental units for years.
City leaders have talked for years about setting up a rental inspection program but didn't make it a priority until a January fire in a rented Southeast Roanoke house killed 46-year-old Goldie Christine Duncan and four of her grandchildren, all under 7 years of age. Though no criminal charges have been filed against the owners, fire investigators found building code violations in the home.
This week, landlords Jack Richards and WTS Inc. agreed to pay $270,000 to settle a lawsuit by the children's mother, Patricia Leftwich. There was no firewall as required between apartments that might have prevented the spread of the fire. The victims died of smoke inhalation upstairs after an extension cord on a downstairs space heater overheated and set the house ablaze.
As the rental plan has moved through multiple versions, there's been at least one gain for tenant advocates in recent weeks: Rooming houses have been added to the properties to be inspected.
But missing now is a requirement that landlords display stickers showing whether rental units are in compliance with the city's building code. Tenants looking at apartments would have no visible sign that the property was not up to code or that repairs had been ordered. "The burden really is on the tenant to inquire or investigate," Pollock acknowledged.
Gone, too, is a provision that rental property owners provide the city with a list of their properties. Landlords objected to both measures, so the sticker display will be voluntary and the city will have to draw up its own lists of rental properties.
Far more dramatic changes were made earlier in the negotiations.
The inspections were to be done every 12 months, but now will be scheduled every 24 months and will be largely voluntary.
At the beginning, tenant advocates wanted the city to require inspections of all rental properties in the targeted neighborhoods - not just when there's a vacancy.
Pollock and committee members said Dibling insisted that a 1994 state law authorized cities to require inspections only on vacancy. So, if a landlord chooses not to cooperate with inspections and has a longtime tenant who's too afraid of eviction to complain, there's little the city can do.
As city Public Works Director Bill Clark described it to council last month, "What began as a mandatory inspection of vacant rental property before reoccupancy has been modified to emphasize a cooperative voluntary component of regular inspections."
Lynchburg requires inspections, not just when there's tenant turnover. That program began before the 1994 law, so Lynchburg considers its program to be securely grandfathered.
Walter Erwin, Lynchburg city attorney, said if his city were beginning its program now, it too might limit inspections to take place between occupancies. But he said Roanoke is playing it safe. Lynchburg takes the view, he said, that its inspections fall under general police powers and not under the section of the state code cited by Dibling.
If Roanoke's program is approved by council, it would be months before it begins and at least two years before it's up to speed. Even then, said Pollock, inspections still will not have begun in some areas. He is budgeted to hire two additional inspectors and a half-time secretary but doesn't expect to hire them until fall.
LENGTH: Long : 126 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ERIC BRADY/Staff 1. Inspecting rental propertiesby CNBbecame a priority after a January fire killed a woman and four of
her grandchildren at this house at 1228 Stewart Ave. S.E. But months
of deliberations have left the plan weaker than it began. Color. 2.
Map: Roanoke conservation areas and rehabilitation districts.