Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 15, 1995 TAG: 9511150057
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Seventy Roanoke landlords owning more than 3,000 rental units have formed an organization to oppose regular city inspections of rental housing.
John Kepley, acting coordinator of the new Roanoke Property Investors Association, predicted at a Tuesday housing conference that property taxes, rental fees and homelessness will rise if the city proceeds with an inspection program aimed at cracking down on deteriorating rental units.
"This is government intrusion of the worst order," he said. "If we have to go to the Supreme Court, we'll go to the Supreme Court."
Kepley, a panelist at the Roanoke Regional Housing Network's fifth annual housing conference at the Salem Civic Center, also complained that an inspection program would be discriminatory because it would target low-income areas.
All Roanoke needs to do is enforce its existing housing code, said Kepley, whose family has owned rental property here for 60 years. Kepley said he currently owns 100 rental units.
Now, the city's two inspectors can inspect properties only when a tenant or a neighbor complains or a warrant is issued against the owner. Under a rental inspection program, such as ones in Lynchburg, Charlottesville and Virginia Beach, all rental properties would be subject to periodic inspections.
The landlords' association was formed shortly after a summer workshop the city held on such inspection programs. Landlords have been talking about forming a group for 20 years, but fears about the city's workshop pushed them to do it, Kepley said. "I think that was the spark that lit it."
The city advertised the July workshop as a chance for tenants and landlords to say whether or not they favored required inspections and forced compliance with code requirements. But Kepley said the workshop was only "a smokescreen," because city government has already decided to enact an inspection system.
Dan Pollock, Roanoke's housing development coordinator, said at Tuesday's panel that nothing has been decided. "Quite frankly," he said, "the city hasn't moved far from the July 31 workshop," and the inspections idea has been kicked around since at least 1979. "Roanoke's taking its time to study it."
Another community workshop will be held at some point to hear more points of view, Pollock said.
Panelist Bob Farmer with the Lynchburg Property Managers Association said that, like Kepley's group, landlords there initially fought an inspection program but eventually helped Lynchburg craft the one that began last year. Landlords persuaded the city not to impose fees on landlords and not to require an inspection each time a rental unit changes hands.
Now, Farmer said, property owners and city inspectors are working together better than ever. "Although it was an uphill battle," he said, "I think we all came out of it with what we wanted."
Lynchburg inspectors are slowly working their way through inspections of each landlord's rental properties within neighborhoods receiving Community Development Block Grant money. That federal money also pays for the inspectors, so fees were not necessary to bankroll the program.
"We're having a whole lot less violations," said Karen Johnson, Lynchburg's inspection director. For instance, she said, she's received far fewer complaints of heating problems since the program began in August 1994.
Typically, she said, landlords voluntarily make repairs in the weeks between the scheduling of the inspection and the inspection itself. After the panel discussion, Kepley said he would accept Pollock's entreaty to come talk with city leaders, not just complain about them.
Kepley would not name his association's members. "We don't want a lot of publicity," he said.
He said, however, that some are "mom and pop" landlords with seven or eight properties, while another owns about 2,000 units, valued at more than $4 million. He said the association's membership has grown from 36 in September to 72 owners of more than 3,000 properties.
Besides keeping an eye on the inspection proposal, Kepley said the group will keep each other posted on destructive, cheating tenants. "We are pictured by and large as greedy landlords," but, Kepley said, he works six days a week, has a tenant who lives on his property rent-free and another who recently disappeared owing him $1,400 and leaving $1,600 in damage. "There are people out there who know how to beat the system."
"Landlords get beat up pretty bad," Kepley said. "There are landlords that need to be reprimanded, but there are some of us who're trying to do a good job. Most of us are."
by CNB