I work a job at which I find myself entering apartments in the city on a regular basis, and I have to say that I am consistently appalled by the way landlords maintain their properties. This ordnance should include measures to enforce maintenance standards, including a regular program of inspections by the city. Many properties in the city are fire traps, a condition caused by poor maintenance and also by the conditions that tenants choose to live in. Holding tenants accountable is a necessary component.

What must come first is the development of an accurate catalog of exactly how many rental units exist in the city. I know for a fact that the city is completely unaware of how many homes have been converted to rental units, many of which are not anywhere close to code.

As for the thought that this ordnance might push poor tenants out of the city... GOOD! Throw the bums out. The city and other groups provide incentive for home buyers to purchase rental buildings and convert them to single family homes. These are great programs, but are under-utilized I think in part because there are so many rental buildings with poor tenants.

I still don't like it. I don't like that a person who didn't commit the disruptive conduct, or was even present when it was committed, can face punishment as a result of it. And, yes, I know there is a seperation of causality; the landlord is being punished for not evicting the tenants, not for the disruptive conduct. But it doesn't seem fair that the tenant can not face charges or punishment, yet the string of events ends in the threat of jail for the landlord. It places the landlord in a babysitter role. I thought that, in America, we didn't hold others responsible for the crimes of adults. If the conditions for eviction required at least one conviction for the tenant on charges resulting from the disruptive conduct, I'd feel a lot better about it. If a person is so disruptive to a neighborhood that they need to be removed from that neighborhood, that removal should be by arrest, conviction and detainment. Don't put landlords in charge of enforcing the minor crimes the City doesn't want to prosecute.

Oh well, plenty of people seem to like it. And I'm not a landlord or a renter. So be it.

It does. Section 2, part A, subsection (i) of the proposed ordinance states:

Lancaster City has already started a regular program of inspecting rental properties. This block-by-block, door-to-door systematic inspection has uncovered hundreds of unlicensed rental units. One of the goals of Gray and his people is to correct exactly what you have mentioned: