“Obviously, there is a problem.”
That was the conclusion reached and articulated by Susan Crotty, Director of the City of Lima’s Department of Community Development. She was speaking at the Aug. 2 Lima City Council Neighborhood Concerns committee meeting, convened to discuss the topic of landlord registration and licensing. In an April 5 letter from Ms. Crotty to Lima City Council, she indicates that the proposal to register and license landlords “is intended to address concerns that have been raised regarding the quantity of substandard dwelling units that are leased to tenants in the City in order to protect the residents safety and to raise the quality of housing units throughout Lima neighborhoods.”
Ms. Crotty, representing the current city administration, proposes that all landlords be required to register with, and be licensed by, the City of Lima. Further, it proposed that all rental units face mandatory city inspection annually. This would, according to Crotty, require hiring seven full-time inspectors at a cost of approximately $750,000 per year, and this cost would be covered by the fees landlords would pay to participate in this mandatory program.
As a property investor, I do agree with Ms. Crotty: There is an obvious problem.
Unfortunately, she, and the current administration, have completely misidentified it and thus, have no workable solution to solve the real problem. Instead, they have committed the most common error in problem-solving: They have misidentified a symptom as the problem. In order to effectively problem-solve, one must first accurately identify the problem to be solved.
The obvious problem that exists is blighted housing in the City of Lima.
I have been involved in local government and community based organizations in this area going back as far as the late 70’s, and I was involved in neighborhood improvement and neighborhood organizing before neighborhood organizations even existed in Lima. I remember when there was no effective code enforcement, and I remember when the first two code enforcement inspectors were hired under the Gene Joseph administration. All of this pre-dates the current Department of Community Development and even the concept of city government being involved in neighborhood support.
Guess what?
We had blighted housing in Lima in the 70’s and 80’s. Demolitions occurred quite regularly in the 1980s, and as those condemned structures were being torn down, more structures continued to deteriorate, only to be added to the demolition list in subsequent years. It’s a pattern that has plagued us for the past 40 years. It says something about the way we, as a community, value our housing stock and value our community. One example of this is the community-wide cleanup that occurs every spring. Every year, multiple tons of trash and debris are taken out of the community at a cost to the taxpayer. Twelve months later, we have accumulated a like amount of trash and debris. What, exactly, are we accomplishing and at what cost?
“Aggressive” code enforcement was implemented about 20 years ago, and it was believed at the time that it would be the solution to our blight problems. Where are we today? Obviously, enforcement as a single solution is ineffective. My community policing days taught me that what government doesn’t do with a community, it does to a community. It’s obvious that on this issue, local government and the majority of the community are not in collaboration, and what we have been doing isn’t working.
I believe that the physical appearance of a community is a reflection of that community’s values and culture. This isn’t a landlord problem, it’s a community problem. The administration’s ill-conceived solution won’t work, and will do nothing but drive up costs for tenants and landlords alike while increasing the size of local government needlessly.
There is no panacea in solving this problem. Instead, it’s a problem that will only be resolved if several strategies intersect and force a change in the community’s value system. It’s not an easy fix, and it’s one that government is wholly incapable of implementing. Instead, the solution will be found in the free market system.
No politician in their right mind will say the things I am about the write here, but they need to be said. This, in my view, is what must happen to change the values and culture of the City of Lima:
• We must stop incentivizing non-production, and return to the general principle that one must produce before one can consume. It’s common knowledge on the street that Lima is the place to come because it’s easier to “live chill” here (slang for not-working and obtaining benefits). In fact, The Lima News wrote a feature article several years ago about a young lady who moved here from Tiffin because she perceived there are more services and benefits available here than in her hometown.
• We must work diligently to attract people from other communities to Lima. In effect, we need more people, as a percentage of the total city population, that can and will work, thus contributing to our local economy. We’ve heard for decades that there are no jobs—now we face a severe labor shortage, and we hear complaints that there aren’t enough of the “right jobs.” We need to stop making excuses and get to work.
• We must develop a strategy to uniformly, equitably, and consistently address code violations, whether the property in question is owned by an investor, is abandoned by an owner, or is owner-occupied. The sad truth is that many of the blighted homes in Lima are owner-occupied by people who cannot afford to own the home. Unfortunate? Yes. But this should not be an excuse for a property to fall into disrepair. Government officials want landlord registry so they can easily locate an owner or owner’s agent, yet that ownership information is public record and more accessible now with a computer search than at any point in history. Citizens shouldn’t be burdened because government desires their job to be easier.
• We must recognize that government’s legitimate role in all of this is minimal, and existing laws and property maintenance codes are sufficient, if they are enforced fairly, uniformly and consistently.
I urge Lima City Councilors to take no action regarding landlord registration and/or licensing. It accomplishes nothing, and the only real consequence will be the creation of one more bureaucratic barrier for business owners to overcome in order to provide needed services to their customers in the City of Lima.
Councilors and administration officials could better spend their time working collaboratively with community stakeholders to improve existing policies and systems that will impact the real problems this community faces.
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