Cedar Rapids Targeting Bad landlords Again
Property market (Photo credit: Alan Cleaver)
The city is meeting at noon today so that they can pass more ordinances for us. The city should take care of their own nuisances like their closed sidewalks and abandoned houses/garages before making new rules for taxpaying property owners. We have a problem house in our neighborhood and the landlord continues to rent to the criminal element and I have never heard of anything happening to them!
The City Council today will consider passing a new ordinance entitled “Nuisance Properties,” which defines how many of which behaviors by tenant or landlord will prompt a property to be labeled a nuisance. Such a label could result in fines against a property and a requirement that the property owner remedy the problem.
The nuts and bolts of the city’s proposed ordinance will have city employees from a variety of departments, including police officers and housing inspectors, feeding information about property violations into the same database, which quickly will alert property owners — including homeowners — of problems at their properties. The city also will create a new city position of nuisance abatement coordinator, who will work with property owners on violations, penalties and plans to remedy the problems. A nuisance label will attach to a property, for instance, if a serious crime occurs at or near a property during a 12-month period or two less serious crimes do or three even less serious ones do.
Robin Tucker, a landlord and Realtor, on Monday said the city’s proposed nuisance ordinance places all the burden on the property owner and none on the tenant. The proposed ordinance is too “heavy-handed” and lacks an educational component for tenants, he added.
Council member Vernon said she isn’t surprised about the landlord concerns because the ordinance is a notable change in the way the city regulates property. “But I think the general public out there welcomes it,” Vernon said. “The vast majority of our citizens and our tenants and landlords are great people. But we been inching and inching toward a higher and higher percentage of those who are not taking care of their properties. And we just have to stop it.”
December 21st, 2012 at 12:43 am
Ajai, I am sure this new ordinance will be enforced randomely and some land-owners will continue to slide by(like the building next to public works before it got torched), while the poorer ones like me get screwed over. Cedar Rapids government works just like the feds.
December 20th, 2012 at 1:33 am
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December 18th, 2012 at 7:18 pm
Hate to be a sticker for details. But today’s meeting is at 4:00P. I know it’s hard to keep up with all the time changes since the last one was at noon. And remember, next month they go back to second and fourth Tuesday of the month, noon, then four, except near holidays. See you there!
December 19th, 2012 at 2:05 am
Yeah, they are hard to keep up with. Thank you for the clarification