05-09-16 Health and Public Safety

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Fines will not be issued right away; there will be a warning letter going out if there is a failure to register or renew the registration. Evansville has a fine of one - hundred (100) dollars a day every day that you do not register. Ours is three- hundred (300) dollars for late registration. This shows the landlord that we are serious about having the registration, but it isn't as big of a burden as we've had in the past. One of the other questions everyone has had is the partial identification and the key number for the property. We are not going to delve into the EIN Number, it is just there to identify the property to the owner if there is any question if that is connected. The number of fines and penalties issued and collected is part of the form here, but we will look at the performance measures to see within a year how this is performing so we can readdress it if we have any issues one way or another. From 2015 -2016, the violations that come up in code show that only twenty (20) percent of the code violations are for properties that are owner - occupied. Rental units account for seventy -two (72) percent. Owners within South Bend account for sixty -six (66) percent, and owners outside of South Bend account for thirty -three (33) percent. Owners in St. Joseph County account for seventy -five (75) percent, and outside of St. Joseph County twenty -four (24.9) percent. Owners in Indiana account for eighty -two (82) percent versus owners from outside of Indiana at eighteen (18) percent. We have concerns with individuals inside of our area, as well as issues with tracking down individuals from outside of our area. President Scott continued his presentation, which is available in the Office of the City Clerk. Santiago Garces will be writing the code for the registration forms, and he is going to see if we can emulate the form that Indianapolis currently uses. Lastly, during the State of the City, the Mayor said the upcoming Landlord Registration Bill will further enhance accountability through the City as the point of contact for every property we encounter. This isn't just about finding irresponsible landlords, it's about making sure that we're able to stay in touch with the majority of landlords who do the right thing. Randy Wilkerson, Director of Code Enforcement 13th Floor of this building, once this is approved, we will educate the public through newsletters and social media to make sure as many people know about this as possible. Once we establish the list, we'll ask for your email address so we can send notifications when it is time to renew registrations. The issue we run into in code hearings is where six (6) of fourteen (14) are LLCs. People do not always show up to represent the LLCs. We've talked about how easy it is to find the registration with the state, and this isn't going to solve the problem because this company is still going to be out of business and it still is not going to have representation, but it will change how we look at people. We can go out and know that you are a good property owner if you're registered, and we'll have a relationship with you.