Block watch demands landlord cleanup

By KATIE SEMINARA

About 100 city residents attended the meeting.

YOUNGSTOWN — Landlords need to be responsible for their properties, but tenants need to answer for their role in poor property conditions as well, said city Councilwoman Annie Gillam, D-1st.

Gillam along with Councilwoman Janet Tarpley, D-6th, and Councilman John Swierz, D-7th, attended a meeting Thursday at the Organizacion Civica y Cultural Hispana Americana, Shirley Road, hosted by the 7th Ward Citizens Coalition and the Mahoning Valley Organizing Collaborative.

The meeting was arranged to discuss unkempt properties owned by a particular landlord and to give community activists the chance to share concerns about vacant and rundown properties.

“It’s not all landlords,” Gillam said. “There are problems on both sides,” she said of need for tenants to be held accountable, too.

The city is designing a program so tenants’ records will precede them after leaving a rental property in bad shape.

If the city and landlords make it more difficult for unruly tenants to find a place to live, when they do rent the property it will be in better shape, Gillam said.

But those in attendance at the meeting wished to recognize issues with one landlord.

The properties being discussed at the meeting were deemed “unsightly” by Jackie Leson of the West Side Nosey Neighbors block watch.

In Leson’s neighborhood there are four properties owned by the landlord, and she said letters with pictures have been sent to him but the neighborhood watch group never heard back.

The problematic landlord was invited to the 7WCC and MVOC meeting, but he did not attend.

The landlord owns about 360 properties in Youngstown, and community residents have been surveying the vacant properties on all sides of town. Two of the vacant houses recently fell victim to arson, and one of the properties was filled with old tires, according to the MVOC, whose focus is to clean up urban neighborhoods in Youngstown and Warren.

If the landlord had attended the meeting, the 7WCC and the MVOC would have asked him to sign an agreement stating that he would immediately deal with about 30 of those properties.

The agreement also stated the landlord would take a landlord training course and evict problematic tenants among other requests pertaining to the landlord being accountable for all owned properties.

James London, president of the Idora Neighborhood Association, spoke out about properties owned by the same landlord in his area and held up a poster board showing pictures of the abandoned eyesores.

“We’re here tonight because we’re sick of it,” he said of having blight in city neighborhoods.

“We have to hold these landlords accountable. No one deserves to live by this or in this,” said London while pointing to the pictures of houses in disrepair.

In order to clean up areas in the city and rein in problematic landlords, the neighborhood block-watch groups and city need to work as one unit, he said.

“Doing things for your neighbors and doing things for your city are the right thing to do,” London said.

Swierz said the city wants the same results as community members and by January the rental license ordinance should be implemented.

The ordinance would require all landlords to register every year for a permit to have a business of rental properties. Landlords would then pay a $20 fee for each property.

The ordinance was approved in 1999, but has never been enforced, Swierz said, adding that previous administrations did not implement the law.

Swierz believes that Mayor Jay Williams is committed to enforcing the ordinance and said the money from fees will allow property inspectors to be more consistent and effective.

Youngstown Police Chief Jimmy Hughes and Ray DeCarlo of Youngstown zoning enforcement also were at the meeting and both agreed to help the 7WCC and the MVOC in their efforts to bring notice to problematic landlords in the city.