LIMA — It has become a hot-button topic when discussing housing in the city of Lima. On Monday, the discussion over a potential landlord registry resumed at Lima City Council’s Neighborhood Concerns Committee, featuring disagreements on not only the potential solutions to the problem, but even how to define the problem of subpar rental housing in the city.
Monday’s meeting was the first to hear from a new panel of stakeholders, each bringing their own perspective to the issue. For Jackie Fox, president of West Ohio Community Action Partnership, the problem comes down to absent slumlords who may not make up the majority of landlords in the city, but who do nothing for their tenants.
“Not every parent is an abuser, but we have laws that protect the few children who are affected by child abuse,” she said. “It’s the same with housing. We have a housing problem in this city. We have landlords who rent a house and two weeks later take out the furnace and don’t come back with another one.”
Jeff Dulmage of Hartsock Realty said that the issue comes down to blighted housing and extremely low property valuations, to the point where for many homes, renovating them would cost more than the renovated house would be worth.
“Are there some bad landlords? No question,” he said. “But the majority of the ones I deal with are part of the solution, not the problem.”
With those different perspectives, potential solutions ranged from conducting audits on a selection of properties owned by a landlord to only having a registry for landlords with complaints to having a registry of good landlords for potential tenants to have to providing more tax incentives for private investment in properties to fostering more intensive education for tenants and landlords on what their current rights are.
“We feel the city needs to educate tenants a little better on the laws that are presently on the books,” 3rd Ward Councilman Jesse Lowe II said. “They, as well as the landlords, need to know what’s on the books to protect them.”
Each member of the Neighborhood Concerns Committee, which consists of Lowe, 1st Ward Councilman Todd Gordon and 2nd Ward Councilman Sam McLean, voiced disapproval of the proposal as it currently stands.
“I have not heard one thing to convince me that we need this program,” Gordon said. “I’m very uncomfortable with it.”
Lowe said that the committee will meet one more time to conclude debate and vote on what recommendation to send to Lima City Council. The date for that meeting has not yet been determined.
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