Charlotte plans to go after landlords of rental properties with some of the city’s highest reported instances of crimes in a program city officials tout as a way to fight crime.
The City Council recently approved the program even though Mayor Pat McCrory expressed doubts, calling it “a cover-up, a smokescreen, a mirage hiding a broken criminal justice system.”
The program, which debuts in June, will require landlords of rental homes and apartments that are in the top 4 percent of calls to police to meet with police and develop a plan to reduce crime at the property. Landlords who can’t reduce crime at their properties could be fined or see the apartments shut down. The program is expected to affect less than 0.5 percent of the city’s rental units.
“It’s the worst of the worst that will be falling into the mix,” said Ken Miller, deputy police chief for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department.
The new law has drawn criticism from legal advocates who fear that it could deter tenants from reporting crime and from neighborhood activists who say it doesn’t go far enough. The three council members who voted against the ordinance, Michael Barnes, Warren Turner and Mayor-elect Anthony Foxx, had wanted the city to require all landlords to register their properties with the city. McCrory and six other council members voted for the law.
“It doesn’t give us all that we want,” said Dorothy Waddy, leader of the Clanton Park neighborhood in Southwest Charlotte. “The real estate companies have been very actively involved in not wanting all absentee landlords to sign up.”
Questions have also been raised about how accurate the process would be — and whether it’s the responsibility of landlords to monitor their tenants.
Michael Sanera, research director at the John Locke Foundation, said city is forcing property owners to serve as cops — without compensation. “They’re singling out the owner of the property to take action against people who violate the law when the police should be taking that action,” Sanera said. “It’s an absolute travesty under the law.”
But Miller said that landlords have a responsibility to try to reduce crime, too.
“Property management has control in a way and leverage that we don’t,” Miller said. “To control behavior you need to pull on all the levers, and one of the levers is the contractual obligation between the tenant and the landlord. Crime is everybody’s problem. Every citizen’s problem. It is everybody’s responsibility to address it. Landlords have a responsibility and a duty to protect the interests of safety on the properties.”
Similar programs exist in many other cities including Raleigh, Houston, and Minneapolis. Houston and Minneapolis have reported drops in crime or calls for service at rental property targeted in those cities.
“On the average, they dropped about 26 percent in crime,” said Sgt. Alan Parish of the Houston Police Department.
In Charlotte, 60 percent of residential crime in 2006 took place in rental housing, and rental units had crime rates two to three times higher than owner-occupied housing.
Miller said the police might put more resources into areas with multifamily rental housing that are targeted under the new law.
“We put our resources where the crimes are problematic, where they are clustered,” he said.
The new law, which was supported by the Greater Charlotte Apartment Association and The Real Estate and Building Industry Coalition, is a watered down version of a proposal that would have required all landlords to list their properties and tell the city where they could be contacted. Raleigh, which recently started a rental registration program, is requiring all landlords to register their property.
“I’m very pleased with the compromise,” said Tommy Lawing Jr., president of T.R. Lawing Realty. “I think it’s a very reasonable solution to the problem.”
Police had wanted all landlords to register their properties because they say it can be difficult to contact landlords during an emergency.
For instance, in February 2008 police arrested two people on drug charges at 806 Cantwell St. The owner is a San Diego, Calif., company called Seeker Acquisitions LLC, according to Mecklenburg County records. A letter police sent to the company has been returned, and they haven’t been able to locate the owner. The North Carolina Secretary of State dissolved the company in December 2008 because it hadn’t filed an annual report.
“There’s a chase,” Miller said. “It almost becomes a cat and mouse game with some landlords.”
Police will determine what properties should be targeted by looking at how many violent crimes, property crimes and calls for service are at properties during a year. They’ll come up with a weighted score for each property with violent crime contributing the most to a home’s score.
Domestic violence isn’t included in crimes that could lead police to crack down on a property’s landlord.
“I think everybody agreed they didn’t want to have any process that would inhibit someone who is a victim from calling,” said Mark Newbold, an attorney for the police department.
But Ted Fillette, lead attorney with Charlotte’s Legal Aid office, said the law could deter people from reporting crime.
“Obviously, property managers who are concerned about having their property flunk could tell tenants not to call and run up their calls for service,” he said.
Fillette also said high numbers of minor complaints to police from a property could land a home on the targeted list.
“I don’t know that complaints about parties, dog barking and loitering are necessarily very indicative of what are high priority neighborhood problems,” Fillette said.
Police estimate that at least 635 single-family homes and 87 multi-family properties will be included in the program. The council district that would have the most properties targeted based on crime reported between September 2008 and August 2009 would be District 2 in northwest Charlotte with 182 properties. The council district estimated to have the fewest targeted properties is District 7 in South Charlotte with nine properties.
Police will try to determine what properties are used as rentals by looking at property and tax records. They had originally said that trying to determine which properties should be targeted without requiring all landlords to register their properties could be inaccurate and lead the city to focus on the wrong properties. It also could leave the city more open to a legal challenge.
Police Maj. Eddie Levins has called the process a “best guess.”
Miller acknowledged that identifying rental property will be harder without a full registration requirement.
Sarah Okeson is a contributor to Carolina Journal.