Santo Napoli operates a men's clothing store and is also a landlord. As a candidate for City Council, he has some proposals for land lording. He does not sell the shirt shown above, I sincerely doubt if there still exists another like it.
In 2000, then mayor Heydt proposed the current Rental Inspection Law. A number of landlords, normally loner types, met together a couple of times to discuss our reaction to the proposal. Allentown's most controversial landlord at the time, and perhaps still, asked to address us. He told us that he very much favored Heydt's proposal. He figured after he crossed the T's and dotted the i's on inspection reports, that his units would then have the same legitimacy as ours. Our take away was that you can stigmatize the good landlords, but you cannot legislate pride of ownership with the bad ones.
Twenty-three years later a candidates for city council, despite the Rental Inspection Law, still campaigns for better landlords.
shown above a former landlord and current blogger, with his shirt from a small, short lived organization
Mike the Rental Inspections Initiative, that was passed by the voters in 1999, by around 90% of the voters has not been enforced as written in well over 15 years. We both know that. Before Ed Pawlowski turned the ordinance into a cash cow, and replaced the leadership of Code Enforcement with someone who would do his bidding instead of the publics, the ordinance uncovered thousands of illegal and substandard units. None of these were your rentals were they? They belonged to the slumlords, so the ordinance, supported by many good landlords held slumlords to account. If Ed had allowed the law to be enforced as written the city would by now have a much better housing stock and the overcrowding common today would never have occurred. lt is worth noting that Ray and Matt also refused to follow the ordinance, and never was their even a peep about it from a single member of our often clueless city council. It my guess not a single person on council even knows what the Rental Inspections Ordinance is.
ReplyDeleteThe ordinance was and still is a cash cow... remember it stated out as "only" $15.00 and it's now $75.00... most likely to rise in the foreseeable future... inflation, you know.... What peeves me is people that rent out rooms in their houses and they fly under the radar as long as they keep the number of renters below a certain number that are not related. No problem if it's your relation. Look how they attacked the student rental operations... the police could have cleaned up the unruly students in no time, but then there would be no additional $$$$$ coming into the coffers.
ReplyDeleteI could relate more but beating a dead dog is futile!!!
Baloney! it was written by citizens not politicians. We wrote a $15 dollar per unit inspection fee enough to cover the costs of the additional few inspectors that would be necessary to carried out the once every five years inspection of rental units. Pawlowski raised the fee to $75 per unit. This was done at the same time he stopped the systematic inspections. This was just one of many things in city government the Ed and his henchmen corrupted.
DeleteThey certainly are consistent about collecting that $75 every year. Maybe once every 5-7 they will actually do an inspection.
ReplyDelete