For rent, cheap, no heat

...or, "There is almost no profit in low-cost housing...

...Though the Federal Government defines any vacancy rate of less than 5 per cent as an emergency, rates in many American cities are far worse: 2 per cent in Baltimore, less than 1 per cent in San Francisco and Newark, and 2.6 per cent in Washington...

...There is in fact no way that America's inner-city housing blight can be alleviated without a massive redistribution of income in society...

...Normal upkeep—let alone costly repairs on deteriorating structures—therefore becomes a rarity for the least well-off tenants...

...Above all, there is hopelessness...

...Touted nationally as a city responsive to its poor, Baltimore has a Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) that is armed with standards, teams of inspectors, repair crews, a computerized system for recording complaints, and two state's attorneys who do nothing but handle court cases involving code violations...

...While some of these grievances are valid, most ring false...

...To begin with, tenants are hardly responsible for the severe structural problems that plague the aging housing stock...

...Ironically, enforcement becomes progressively more difficult as you descend the ladder of housing quality," says David Harvey, an urban expert at Johns Hopkins University...

...Second, taxes in badly blighted areas have generally remained constant for the last few years...

...I don't cry any more...

...As slum properties disappear— as they are either torn down entirely, renovated for higher-income occupants, or abandoned—the poor have fewer and fewer units to rent...

...On the top floor, two rooms lie buried knee-deep in the rubble of a roof that collapsed six months earlier...

...In the late 1940s, Senator Robert ("Mr...

...Tenants don't complain about horrendous conditions and landlords agree not to raise rents dramatically or to evict them...

...Landlords do provide it and profits are made...

...Further, if a summons contains a misspelled name, a wrong middle initial, or an incorrect company title, the landlord may legally refuse to accept it, and the whole process must begin afresh...

...Two small rooms on the middle floor are the only usable space for the fifty-three-year-old tenant, her unemployed brother, and her eighty-six-year-old grandfather, who stares vacantly from his wheelchair...

...As for the fines, the small amounts are hardly deterrents to large landlords...

...The landlords' goal," says Lewis, "is to put off repairs for as long as possible, because these obviously cut into profits...

...For rent, cheap, no heat A third of all renters live in substandard housing in Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago____ Barbara Koeppel In the heart of East Baltimore's black ghetto, the brick on the six-room rowhouse is crumbling, the steps sag, and the wooden trim is rotten...

...Why...

...And out-of-state or out-of-country absentee owners stymie the process even further...

...Also, though cities may require that violations be corrected within days or weeks, cases still drag on for months and years because property owners manipulate the system...

...Rents are too high and we've been waiting for public housing for six years...

...The monthly welfare payment for a family of four now stands at $326...

...There are between 50,000 and 70,000 substandard housing units in Baltimore, most of which are rental, yet there are just sixty inspectors who must regularly inspect all multi-family dwellings, check an average of 42,000 complaints a year, and follow the cases all the way to court...

...Of 816 random cases of outstanding code violations, "25 per cent were more than ten months old and dozens of others were two, three, and four years old...

...Taft was wrong...

...Landlords use various forms of ownership (for tax breaks and other purposes) that don't require individual names on deeds...

...When property owners take court action, the process is simple and swift...

...in winter, wind sweeps through the loose windows, and the only heat drifts from the open oven...

...Landlords and tenants are well aware of the impasse...

...Barbara Koeppel is a contributing editor of The Progressive...

...Thus it's too great a risk to complain...

...And with postponement, a case might not be heard for over a year...

...Otherwise, the government must pick up the tab through more public housing (boosting the current dismal 3 per cent to something closer to the British figure of 25 per cent) and subsidized rentals...

...He can say your children are too noisy, you play music too loudly, or you are late in your rent...

...One option for landlords is to let the building become uninhabitable, evict the tenants, board up the windows, pay taxes, and sell when rising property values make the price right...

...Using a variety of sticks and carrots, Baltimore's HCD, for example, claims to woo landlords into voluntary compliance in 95 per cent of the cases—a tactic born of necessity since the Housing Court can only handle 1,000 cases a year...

...The biggest obstacle is that code violations are criminal offenses...

...I cried to [the landlady] on the phone, 'Will you please make it warm for us and also move the debris from the roof?' But she only laughed and said the litter would keep in the heat...

...Until such change comes, slum housing will continue to scar the landscape and the lives of its occupants...

...In Los Angeles, where the rate plummets to .5 per cent in Hispanic and .4 per cent in black ghettos, more and more of the poor are living in autos and paying between $20 and $30 a month for bathroom or kitchen privileges in nearby apartments...

...I've given up," she says softly...

...In Baltimore, 34,000 families were listed at last count, with an average wait of five to ten years, while in Chicago, 53,000 families are waiting...

...They live without heat or hot water...

...Judges won't put landlords in jail' Critics say the cities could, in fact, do better, even with their flawed enforcement systems...

...Because of staff cutbacks, multi-family buildings, formerly inspected once a year, are now checked every twenty-four months, and then only common spaces such as hallways and a sample unit are examined...

...It's they who must call the landlords, they who must complain to HCD or Legal Aid, and they who must prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that conditions are truly bad...

...Finally, landlords risk violating the housing code and laws because the chance of being caught and penalized—to any real degree—is slim...

...Even with the law, a landlord can always get rid of you," says Katherine Lewis, a former state's attorney with Baltimore's HCD...

...The housing inspector came and said, 'Why don't you move?' But where can we go...

...The pattern is well known...

...The waiting list for Federally subsidized private units (Section 8 housing) or public housing is long and growing...

...Even when inspectors turn up violations, enforcing the code is not easy...

...Ambrose Housing, a Baltimore counseling and rehabilitation center, insists Baltimore's HCD won't push too hard or cite all the violations it could because the owners might abandon their properties...

...Aware of this, landlords often transfer properties to other corporations they or their relatives own under different names...

...Republican") Taft, then leader of the conservative wing of his party, sponsored a public housing bill...

...While Baltimore tenants do have the right to withhold rent in escrow accounts until repairs are made and even to sue landlords for the months they endure unhealthy or hazardous conditions, most of the poor are unaware of these procedures...

...Nor will it ever be if the present system of housing remains unchanged...

...Baltimore is far from unique: In Chicago, city officials put the figure at 33 per cent...

...Many families in this city cannot afford more than $150 a month rent," says one Baltimore landlord...

...First, there is the overriding fear of reprisals...

...Where tenants' groups have campaigned for "just cause eviction" laws (laws that protect renters from retaliatory evictions after they've complained about conditions or taken landlords to court), the bills are usually defeated by real estate interests...

...But Los Angeles closes the list from time to time, refusing to accept new applications...

...The result—housing code enforcement is least effective where it is most needed and most effective where it is least needed...

...Moreover, the law does not require landlords to know that violations exist on new properties they buy...

...In part, city laws themselves are responsible for the decay, as they blatantly favor owners over renters of property...

...Conditions are grim, yet tenants rarely complain...

...Ralph Moore, a staff member of St...

...Landlords ignore violation notices, refuse to accept court summonses, fail to show for trials or ask for postponements, start repairs and leave the work incomplete, or threaten to evict tenants and abandon the properties altogether...

...Thus, just determining who should be served with a violation notice or court summons can require lengthy investigation...

...Each delay means housing notices that must be reissued, meetings and trials that must be rescheduled...

...Everyone is responsible, except the landlord...

...From the landlords, there are the standard complaints: "We make repairs quickly and well, but irresponsible tenants destroy our properties...

...But 30,000 units were torn down where new ones were built...

...Again Baltimore provides a typical example: "The way the law reads, the burden is on tenants to ensure their housing is maintained properly," says Hitchcock...

...The court cannot order owners to make repairs...

...Repairs, as well as service, have yet to materialize...

...You would need an army of inspectors to check all the substandard properties, and that will never happen," says Moore about proposals to beef up code enforcement as a solution to the problem...

...In Los Angeles, even when a landlord is found guilty of serious violations, the total fine is no more than $250...

...But it is the awareness that their tenants have no alternative that offers landlords the greatest incentive to skimp...

...The landlord files for back rent and there is a hearing in Baltimore's Rent Court within fifteen to thirty days," she notes...

...Even when HCD takes the case to court, nothing happens...

...How can I turn even a modest profit and provide a decent house, at today's prices, for that...

...Poor people just don't think anything will change, since they've been living in desperate conditions for so long," says Lucille Gorham, head of Baltimore Citizens for Fair Housing, an inner-city advocate group...

...But the stark signs of decay are no warning for the scene inside...

...Critics, however, charge the "compliance" is questionable and the time involved indefensible...

...If this should take place in the form of cash, then a whole battery of legislation and regulation must follow to keep it from being sucked back out by landlords as extra profits...

...San Francisco's record is typical: Over the last fifteen years, 5,000 new units of Federally subsidized housing were constructed...

...Avol was found guilty and fined $250...

...Besides heating and plumbing problems, a quick tour of inner-city housing reveals similar problems everywhere— walls with holes large enough to put a body through, collapsing walls and floors, exposed wiring, and a nightmare of rats and roaches...

...It's so cold downstairs that some water in a glass froze," the woman says...

...The judges don't believe renting out bad housing is a serious crime and won't put landlords in jail...

...It was needed, he claimed, since there was no way private enterprise could provide housing for the poor and turn a profit...

...Even this minor detail shows how lopsided the rules are, Hitchcock observes: "When landlords send eviction or rent-increase notices, they can use regular mail...

...The drawbacks with Housing Court, where Baltimore's HCD sends all but a handful of its cases, are glaring...

...Across the country, in Los Angeles, tenants in a downtown building owned by neurosurgeon Milton Avol filed suits against their landlord four times...

...Rent control laws, coupled with housing maintenance provisions, code enforcement, and the like, can then make sense...

...in Detroit, 32 per cent, and in Washington and Los Angeles, 25 per cent...

...The system is stacked against America's urban poor...

...More and more of the poor are living in autos On paper, the cities' housing code enforcement systems look sound...

...For centuries, landlords have enjoyed the right to evict at will, and they continue to do so today...

...Still, officials admit 31 per cent of Baltimore's rental housing is substandard, and much of that is downright dangerous...

...Of course, landlords are in business to earn profits, and from that point of view they do have a justifiable complaint about their tenants...

...When a tenant does choose to use the rent escrow law, he or she must first send a letter to the landlord by certified mail, stating what the conditions are...

...But the people live in misery...

...the pieces are so interlocked that piecemeal changes just will not do...

...A Baltimore Sun investigation revealed the depth of the problem in that city...

...In Chicago, there are 160 inspectors...

...In the very few locales where such laws exist, protection is limited only to a certain period—say, six months after complaints...

...Whom do you serve," asks John Huppert, head of Baltimore's inspection division, "when the owner of 100 dilapidated houses is a Panamanian corporation, managed by a German national living in Venezuela...

...Likewise, in Los Angeles, guilty landlords can be jailed, but "it never happens," says Barbara Blanco, a Legal Aid staff attorney...

...Since the city rarely follows through to see if repairs are made, nothing changes...

...In subsequent trials, the fine was increased to $500, and most recently, he was ordered to do public service for the city...

...Says one housing inspector, "Most repairs are of the Band-aid variety, and within a short while, we're called back for the same condition...

...By this time, if the condition was unbearable, the tenants have moved...

...The whole enforcement system is stacked from the start—against renters," says former Legal Aid lawyer Jean Hitchcock...

...Thus a bargain is struck," says Brendan Walsh, founder of Baltimore's city-wide Coalition Against Displacement...

...Then, tenants are on their own...

...They call HCD, an inspector comes, and nothing happens...

...But there are 208,000 substandard rental units, and in the last few years there have been numerous indictments of housing inspectors for taking bribes from landlords...

...thus, the only possible penalties are fines or jail sentences...

...Faced with a need to turn a profit, landlords in low-income neighborhoods automatically choose to skimp on maintenance...

...But decent, safe, and sanitary housing it is not...

...The judges simply impose "summary probation" and tell offenders not to violate the code again...

...The city also has a Housing Court that hears an average of 1,000 cases a year and a Rent Court, which, though originally established as a tool for landlords, is now also used by tenants to establish escrow accounts and sue negligent owners...

...Landlords, speculators, banks, city officials, laws, and tenants interact in such a way as to ensure that wherever the poor rent, slum housing is there...

...But these rooms are hardly livable...

...Thus, when a case against a landlord is in progress, even if major violations are cited, the whole process must begin again from scratch if he or she sells the building to someone else...

...To these, new gripes have been added: Rising property taxes and inflation have cut so deeply into the already meager profits, they say, that the whole effort is hardly worth the hassle...

...The new place is just as bad—but the next time repairs are needed, the people don't bother calling...

...They talk to the landlord, and nothing happens...

...The ground floor is dank and without heat...

...Baltimore's case' is instructive...

...In Los Angeles, the list is shorter—only 18,055 families...

...And this is the last thing city officials want, since empty buildings spell lost taxes...

...The city's HCD is drowning under an impossible caseload...

...From the first day they complain, it can be a year or longer until repairs are made, or never," says Gorham...

...Moreover, single-family homes, which constitute the bulk of Baltimore's dilapidated inner-city housing, are never inspected on the inside, except in response to complaints...

...Most important, mortgage payments—which account for about 50 per cent of the landlords' overhead costs— are set at the time the owner buys the building and are totally untouched by inflation...

...But it takes at least four to six months from the time a tenant files a complaint for a case to reach Housing Court—even if the condition is really dangerous...

...And if landlords disinvest, there must be back-up ways of converting rental housing into cooperative forms of ownership...