ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, June 18, 1996 TAG: 9606180092
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER note: above
MISSING A FEW TEETH, the law mandates inspection of inner-city homes whenever the tenants move.
With a couple of concessions to landlords, Roanoke City Council adopted a program Monday to force inner-city rental property for the first time to pass building inspections when an apartment or house changes tenants.
The rental inspection plan - begun with residents' ideas at public hearings, then hammered out by a residents' committee and the city administration - also aims to entice landlords to seek and pass inspections in a parallel voluntary program.
Two tools of the mandatory program, urged by neighborhood leaders but denounced by landlords, have been struck from the ordinance in recent weeks: red stickers posted on rentals that would have alerted prospective tenants whether the properties had passed or failed inspection, and a requirement that landlords supply the city with lists of all their rental properties.
"Absent those two conditions," said City Manager Bob Herbert, "it is my understanding that we have maximized everything under the framework of state law. It is as strong a mandatory program as allowed under the commonwealth of Virginia."
The city administration also recently eliminated a $75 fee for landlords who chose not to volunteer for inspections and whose tenants' complaints about substandard properties resulted in inspections. A $75 fee still will apply to recalcitrant landlords who eventually ask for inspections to avoid prosecution when their substandard properties become vacant.
Council approved Herbert's recommended plan by a vote of 6-1. Mac McCadden, in his last council meeting after four years in office, voted against it, saying inspections should cover the whole city, not just the poorest neighborhoods. The program will be limited to the approximately 4,700 rental units in the 12 neighborhoods encircling downtown.
Systematic inspections will begin on a pilot basis after July 1 but won't shift into high gear until next year. Before Monday's passage of the ordinance, Roanoke inspected rental housing only during construction or when a tenant, neighbor or other person complained about conditions.
Stricter regulation was urged by neighborhood organizations after a January fire in a Southeast Roanoke house killed a woman and her four grandchildren. The rented house lacked firewalls between apartments that might have slowed or prevented the spread of the blaze.
Paula Prince, president of the neighborhood group in Old Southwest, another of the areas that will fall under the new program, said Monday the rental plan didn't live up to the city's recent distinction of being named an All America City.
Without stickers posted plainly at rental units, she said, tenants "will not know if their unit has passed a basic health and safety inspection. ... Only those landlords with less-than-honorable intentions would protest the posting of an inspection sticker."
Landlords John Kepley and Bill Wilson said stickers would unfairly "stigmatize" renters and their neighborhoods. Council member Linda Wyatt got no response to her idea to put stickers in out-of-the-way places such as fuse boxes. As it stands, landlords will have the option of displaying stickers, but they will not be required to do so.
Herbert expressed anger at the meeting about a Saturday news story in The Roanoke Times headlined "After the fire, a watered-down plan." The article described the evolution of the plan, the growth of its voluntary component and the elimination of mandatory stickers and other enforcement tools that had been included in earlier drafts.
Herbert said the plan was stronger than reported in the newspaper. "It is a mandatory plan," he said. He acknowledged, however, that inspections can be forced only when there's a turnover in tenants. He said City Attorney Wilburn Dibling believes the city cannot force inspections under any other circumstances because of the limits of a 1994 state law.
Tenant advocates warned for months that limiting inspections to the period between tenants would mean that deteriorating homes of uncomplaining renters would escape city inspectors' oversight for years. Lynchburg's rental program requires inspections of all rental units, not just on vacancy. Its program, however, predates the restrictive 1994 law and, Herbert said, has not been tested in court.
The Rev. Wayne Harrison, whose Southeast Roanoke church is near the home that burned in January, urged council members to imagine how neighbors there felt as they listened helplessly to the pleas of the dying woman and her grandchildren. He asked council to put "every tooth and nail" into the ordinance.
"If the law needs to be changed," he said, "the law needs to be changed."
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