Residents First

Residents First proposal will have an impact on Lead Safety goals in 2024 and 2025. 

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In the News

• March 18, 2024  Ideastream Public Media Cleveland takes aim at absent landlords with 'aggressive' policies to help residents like these

• March 12, 2023. Columbus Dispatch Columbus nuisance property team adds social worker, attorney to help displaced residents "The Columbus Zone Initiative — a city program focused on eliminating nuisance properties — is hiring new staff and rebranding to become the Property Action Team, Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein announced at a Tuesday news conference. The team — which started as a pilot program in 2008 — works with other city departments like the Columbus Division of Police to shut down properties that are unsafe, illegal or a hub for crime. Here's what you need to know from Tuesday's news conference. What's new with the Property Action Team? The Property Action Team consists of five city lawyers, each assigned to one of police division's patrol zones. Last year, Columbus police added a sixth patrol zone, so the team is hiring a sixth lawyer to go with it, Klein said. The team is also hiring a full-time social worker to help residents displaced or affected by nuisance properties. The social worker will join the team's existing cohort of social work interns from Ohio State University."

• Sep. 29, 2023. cleveland.com. Cleveland’s ‘Residents First’ code enforcement overhaul would offer powerful new ways to fight blight. "Slumlords. Blighted homes. Vacant homes. Faceless out-of-state corporations, snatching up properties and allowing them to crumble. Clevelanders know these problems well, and many have cursed City Hall for what they see as local officials sitting idly by. But change could be on the horizon." 

• Sep 28, 2023. Cleveland Scene. 'It's a Disaster': Real Estate Groups Balk at City's Proposed Housing Code Overhaul. ""My first thought? It's a disaster," Ralph McGreevy, the head of the Northern Ohio Apartment Association, which represents some 200,000 units, told Scene. McGreevy, along with the five other real estate experts interviewed for this article, believes that the strict provisions meant to punish and impede bad actors may have a stymieing affect on mom-and-pop landlords, namely those struggling to keep decent margins.Residents First, housing experts say, may actually do more harm to "good actors"—mom and pop landlords—than intended. The theory is that with added hoops to leap through, with more necessary inspections (which cost $325 to $375 on average in Ohio), mandatory registration, unforeseen $200 fines, court fees, et cetera, well-meaning landlords will be further deterred. Or, they say, tenants will be harmed, especially with the legislation's required Point-of-Sale inspection, which requires money for repairs go into a city-owned escrow account at a 150 percent markup."

Sidebar #3: Despite all the sympathetic rhetoric about protecting "mom and pop" landlords and not being included in the drafting process, the real redline for the Northern Ohio Apartment Association and the Real Estate industry is inspections. Taking the "investigate" out of investment is their goal.

• NOAA doesn't have many mom and pop owners as members. NOAA represents local corporate owners. 

• During the Great Recession when the homebuying business was moribund, real estate brokers and agents morphed into becoming property managers. That trend continues today in the face of high mortgage interest rates. Investor owners or managers for investment owners. They know how to spend money on legislative issues.

Sidebar #4: The messaging on Residents First has focused on "out of town predatory" investors. but the reality is that many local entities are facilitators of local and predatory investors. Many locally based "flippers" are "bad actors." So, really. are these residents being protected?

• Sally Martin O'Toole has said that there will be two tiered enforcement of Residents First ordinance provisions: local owners will get financial assistance from the city to come into compliance with inspections. Out of town investors will get the back of the hand. Sally Martin O'Toole "told Scene. "So yeah, it will make the bad actors want to leave—and that's fine. We're fine with them going away."

• How's that working for ya in Cleveland's sister-in poverty-city: Detroit?

Sidebar #5: Who's got the dough-re-mi? Much of the current enforcement efforts focused on the Shaker Square landlords, the Norfolk and Western Railroad and the 50 delinquent owners of Lead Poisoned houses, is being funded by ARPA money which will be running out around the same time that the Council and Mayor are running for reelection.