ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, March 25, 1997 TAG: 9703250105
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
Housing Secretary Andrew Cuomo and Attorney General Janet Reno announced a joint effort to go after slumlords.
Landlords who pocket millions of dollars in federal repair aid and then force tenants to huddle around gas stoves in rundown apartments are being pursued in an aggressive new enforcement program.
The campaign was announced Monday by Housing Secretary Andrew Cuomo and Attorney General Janet Reno. Cuomo said the Department of Housing and Urban Development already had begun seizing unrepaired properties in New York, Indianapolis, Dallas and New Orleans.
One owner near New Orleans accepted more than $2 million in federal assistance over the past three years but failed to take care of leaky roofs, pest infestation and heating problems that forced 157 families to turn on their gas stoves for heat, according to HUD.
Reno said the Justice Department ``will work closely with HUD in its intensified effort to pursue unscrupulous landlords.'' U.S. attorneys in 50 cities will make the investigations a top priority, she said.
``If you misuse federal resources, we will find out, track you down and we will make you pay,'' Cuomo said.
Reno said the problem was more than just an issue of taxpayer ripoffs and poor housing. Citing the ``broken window'' theory, which holds that one broken window quickly leads to a downward spiral for the whole community, Reno said that crime rises in neighborhoods that are in disrepair.
Nearly 1 million people live in 446,000 privately owned, federally subsidized units in the 50 cities being targeted by the program, including Philadelphia, Detroit, Miami, Charlotte, N.C., and Lexington, Ken. There are about 4.3 million people living in 2.5 million such units across the country.
Apartment owners in the 50 cities receive $9 billion each year in government subsidies. Cuomo said a small number are not making mortgage payments and not doing promised repairs on the units - a practice known as equity skimming.
HUD will pursue the skimmers by making more employees investigators and training them to get stronger evidence to build better criminal cases. HUD also plans to hire private contractors to assist in investigations.
A representative of subsidized-housing landlords cautioned that abuses involved only a small fraction of subsidized housing.
``We invite the secretary and the attorney general to take a national tour of government-assisted properties,'' said John Boehm. director of the National Affordable Housing Management Association. ``They can see for themselves the examples of abuse are few and far between.''
Cuomo also called for a change in laws that would make equity skimming the equivalent of money laundering, a change that would make it easier to build cases against cheating landlords.
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