Time to Fix It, Just Fix Wilmington's Landlord Problem
Have you been following the progress of the Wilmington “Blight Bill”? Mayor Purzycki has been working for at least two years to revise Wilmington’s Housing Code, mainly to give the City the ability to speed up code enforcement actions. Wilmington’s code enforcement is currently based on criminal penalties — meaning that people who violate code (especially for the big stuff) need to be hauled into court in order to get an official order for compliance or the imposition of penalties. That means that anyone cited for code violations (if they don’t remediate the problem) is taken to court (6-8 months to get on the docket) where you will be lucky to have a court-sanctioned resolution in 12 months plus or minus. Those penalties? Could be a $250/week fine (!), community service, orders for remediation or whatever a judge will order. In the meantime, the violation can continue — porches falling in, bad plumbing, vermin, lack or reliable heat or clean water or any of the big issues that undermine the quality of life for the people who live there and sometimes undermine it for the neighbors.
The original version of this bill did not make it out of committee. After promises not to target homeowners, to not take homeowners to sheriff sale and other items to try to convince people that this is targeted at vacant property owners and landlords, a new version of this bill was introduced earlier in May. There was a committee hearing Wednesday and it is passed to the floor of Council for a full vote.
This new bill isn’t perfect, either (and some tweaks were made before the committee meeting) but gets further in targeting one of the major vectors is disinvestment in Wilmington — absentee (as well as the just generally bad) landlords. Wilmington needs a more comprehensive approach to counteracting disinvestment in some of its neighborhoods and needs to better talk about what they are trying to get done. Because before all of these bills get considered there is a giant disinformation program designed to fire up people’s anxieties about losing their homes but also objectively stands with the very forces of disinvestment they keep telling people they are trying to protect them from. In this instance, the disinvestment they are protecting is that which occurs by supporting the Wilmington slumlord model.
It’s really heartbreaking, because all of this disinformation stands in the way of trying to address one of the biggest problems with Wilmington’s housing stock. It tells people that the tenants in these buildings will be even more put upon than they are now — living with buildings that landlords just don’t invest in. Importantly, it tells the people who own homes and live in these neighborhoods that it is OK for these slumlords to steal value from their homes too. So let’s take a look at some of it. These examples come from a website that has been in wide circulation among the people who think they need to keep slumlords in business — The Wilmington Neighborhoods Coalition (NOTE: the renters page where these claims come from has been removed, replaced with claims of victory) telling these falsehoods to renters in Wilmington:
Read more: https://bluedelaware.com/2019/06/02/time-to-fix-it-just-fix-wilmingtons-landlord-problem/