02-06-19 Health and Public Safety

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"'CITY OF SOUTH BEND j OFFICE OF THE CLERK place in the place they are renting. It's not like they are sitting in a restaurant and I wonder what's going on in the kitchen. They can see the whole house and if they have a problem with it,they can see it. I have concerns about the International Property Maintenance Code that I don't think very many people are familiar with. I feel like we have good City, County and State Building and Code requirements. If you read through it all, it makes us subject not only to the IPMC but the International Fire Code, International Building Code, and I don't think anyone has read all that. Regarding the evicted tenants, I don't think offering them eight hundred dollars ($800) is helpful. If you don't have a better place to go and you're replacing them, don't kick them out. Allen Grace, 332 N. Ironwood Drive, stated,Thank you very much for having this meeting and an opportunity to present information. I'm a property owner in South Bend and a realtor by profession. As a realtor, I do not do property management for rental properties but because of my business, I have a little knowledge of the situation regarding properties and property ownership issues. As a realtor, I have significant interest in property rights issues for all property owners regardless of it being owner-occupied or a landlord. I want to make it clear that I'm not speaking on behalf of the Realtors Association or for realtors, in general. I am speaking as a citizen and property owner in South Bend. Over the past few weeks as the ordinance was publicly announced, I have attended most, if not all, of the public meetings about this process and other meetings intended to address some of the issues of affordable rental housing in South Bend. I am saddened, surprised and disappointed by the notification of some of the reported abusive operations of some landlords and hope they are the extreme. No, they are not the norm. I hope their reported actions are somewhat mischaracterized in detail, but if not, I agree in principal that some action needs to be taken. While I understand the intent of this proposal and agree with it, I believe the current proposal is full of problems in interpretation and implementation. This punishes all of the people who are spending their money to supply housing in this City in an effort to eliminate the minority of people that are causing the problems expressed. I don't know what the statistics are, but I question if this is another eighty-twenty (80-20) rule or even a ninety-ten (90-10) rule where ten percent (10%) are causing ninety percent (90%) of the problems. The solution proposed does address those ten percent(10%)but hitting all one hundred percent(100%)is an unfair distribution of cost and results. There may be satisfactory possibilities or solutions without affecting the property rights of citizens. By penalizing them for a small portion of abuse owners that are not there and not a part of it, I am thus concerned that the property as written is not what is intended. There are a number of things I would like to address in detail but there is one(1)thing we need to pay attention to. While under the best intentions, this proposal is allowing a single government department and, in some cases, possibly, the very same individual to define the inspection requirements, inspect for compliance to the requirements, interpret the results of the inspection and, as a result, impose penalties with the penalties going to a dedicated fund for the department. In effect, self-funding the department, inspectors and process for perpetuation and growth. I believe that is a bad concept and I have a lot of details that go into the specifics of the Code which I would be glad to address at another time. Judy Fox, 725 Howard Street, stated,I wanted to address some of the questions that came up about what the current state of the law is. We do have some of the weakest landlord tenant laws in the country. That is well established and well known. The law currently requires properties to meet housing and building codes but there is absolutely no enforcement mechanism. If your property doesn't meet it, there's really no effective way to do anything about it. You can possibly go into court to get a protective order but that takes many trips. I've had clients lose their jobs trying to do this. It is not an easy process. I'm a lawyer and it's not an easy process for me so you can imagine EXCELLENCE ACCOUNTABILITY I INNOVATION INCLUSION EMPOWERMENT 455 County-City Building 227 W.Jefferson Bvld South Bend,Indiana 46601 p 574.235.9221 f 574.235.9173 111)574.235.5567 www.southbendin.gov 19