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REGULAR MEETING May 9, 2016 help out his residents not every landlord will do so. It will take almost four (4) hours for him to register all of his properties. This would be a much better bill if the extra information like the IRS Responsible Party information was not required to register. The bill also asks for outstanding citations but Code Enforcement should already have that information. Code Enforcement should be not be in charge of monitoring the success of the program because that is a conflict of interest and the measure of success is also wrong as well. It should be measured on the values of real estate. Steve Weaver, 3321 Mishawaka Avenue, disclosed he is a landlord in South Bend and spoke against the bill. There is a disconnect between what this bill is supposedly attempting to do with the database and the problem you are trying to solve. As a landlord, Mr. Weaver feels he is being treated the same as bad landlords. His name and address are easily able to find by any government source. He only has two (2) remedies when a tenant is causing a problem. He can either ask the tenant to fix the Code violation or sue for eviction and those are the only two (2) remedies landlords have. If tenants pay their rent it is very hard to get them evicted and Code violations will probably be enough to convince the court to evict that family. The tenant is protected to the landlord. The landlord has to give notice of twenty -four (24) hours to inspect the property. If neighbors call him about a problem on a property he directs them to Code Enforcement or the Police Department. This bill will not solve those problems the presenters spoke about. This bill puts landlords in a spot where they cannot do anything to remedy the problems. This registry is not going to solve the problems discussed today. Bob Coffee, 10586 Jefferson Rd. Osceola, spoke on behalf of the Greater South Bend - Mishawaka Association of Realtors. They have tried to work with Councilmember Scott to help craft a bill that is acceptable to all because they are not against cleaning up the neighborhoods or going after the nuisance properties. As was mentioned briefly before creating a database will not solve a problem. The problem is you have these people that you cannot find they are certainly not going to come out of the shadows to sign up for this registry and you are still not going to be able to find those people. This ordinance will not accomplish its goals. On behalf of the Real Estate Association, Mr. Coffee asked the Council to table the bill to bring more voices to the table and create a better law. Dan Witcamp, P.O. Box 2611 South Bend, owns and manages properties in South Bend. He asked that all the other businesses, not just landlords, have to register not just the rental property owners. Mr. Witcamp expressed doubt that this information will be vetted properly because if you are going to have a database and vet it you need information to vet it against. Also, the vacated properties that are owned by a bank or the City are not addressed in this bill. There is also nothing in this bill to limit the registration fees or penalties from going up every year. Steve Eslinger, a practicing attorney and landlord in South Bend, spoke against the bill especially the excessive fines. In 1998 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that excessive fines are a violation of the 8th Amendment to the Constitution and in 2002 Indiana courts ruled that the Indiana Constitution also deems excessive fines unconstitutional. The courts analyzed these cases based not on what a landlord gets in rent a month but rather assess the excessive nature of the fine between the cost of compliance and the cost of the fine. The cost of compliance for this bill is $5 which is set by the Indiana Code and that ties your hands to how much the fine can be. A sixty (60) times the amount of the registration fee for a fine will not pass muster in any court. This will come up when Code Enforcement charges these fines and then two (2) years down the road you are going to have a class action lawsuit on behalf of the people who pay those fines and those people will demand all that money back plus their attorney fees for prosecuting that case. Mr. Eslinger asked the Council to revisit these fines and bring the bill back then and all the cities that passed landlord registrations with fines comparable to South Bend's were enacted before the 2014 state law was passed. The rules regarding this issue have changed. Penny Hughes, a landlord for forty -two years and a realtor for thirty -nine years in this community, thanked the Council for their services because it is a thankless job. Ms. Hughes also thanked Code Enforcement for the hard work they do in contacting them about their tenants and keeping the neighborhoods nice. People deserve decent housing and they deserve to live in nice neighborhoods. The good landlords are the ones who rehab the housing after tenants trash the house. We are not a bunch of fat -cats getting rich off of these properties. Part of the problem is 14