Section A • Page 6
The University Daily Kansan
Wednesday, March 8, 2000
Top violators slow to fix problems.
Continued from page 1A
manager of PMS. refused to comment.
Stonehouse Rentals Inc., owned by Salah Ibrahim was second and received nine complaints.
Ibrahim's nephew said that he could not comment on the business's affairs and that Ibrahim was indefinitely out of the country for a funeral.
Del Hedgepath, a Kansas City, Mo., millionaire who lives in a mansion on Ward Parkway, came in third with six complaints. Hedgepath owns 12 living units in Lawrence and hundreds more in Kansas City.
Hedgepath took pride in the fact that he had only had six complaints.
Morning Star Management, owned by Paul Horvath was fourth on the list, with five complaints, and William Lemseny Sr. was fifth on the list with four complaints.
Horvath, who owns 53 living units in Lawrence, said he thought the number of complaints was pretty good.
"If you look at the number of properties and the number of alleged violations, it's really a very small number." Horvath said.
By comparison, Mastercraft Management manages 460 living units but has no complaints or violations.
Lawrence a hot spot
No matter how many properties a landlord owns, any number of violations is cause for concern, according to counselors from Housing & Credit Counseling Inc., a neutral agency financed by federal, state and local grants.
"It's absolutely terrible," said Dorian Heirionimus, a counselor for the agency. "You have to think about the people who live in those homes."
Dorian Heironimus and Cornel Mayfield are two of three housing counselors who work for the agency. They each answer 15 to 20 phone calls a day and advise distraught tenants throughout Kansas.
Calls come frequently from Lawrence, Mayfield said.
"I spent 25 years dealing with landlord and tenant things — Lawrence is bad," he said.
Although the agency advises landlords and tenants, the calls come overwhelmingly from tenants, Mayfield said. Callers most often complain that bad living conditions.
However, apathy and ignorance are the real problems. Mayfield said.
"All over the state of Kansas, it is tenants not knowing what their rights are," Mayfield said. "And it's also a lot of landlords not knowing the law. What happens is, because tenants don't know the law, they get taken advantage of by landlords who do."
In college towns, like Lawrence, universities annually generate a new crop of students inexperienced with housing issues. Students leave the residence halls with little experience with renting. They've never entered into a contract before. They don't know how to protect themselves, and they don't know that they should.
"They're going to college, they're transient," Mayfield said. "They just go to school, they get taken advantage of, and move on."
No working toilet
Att the Viper Pit, McGraw and Batten did not have any functional toilets for a time.
McGraw and Batten called the Building Inspection and Health departments. They left messages.
No one from building inspection called them back. McGraw said.
For a week in January, neither toilet worked. The downstairs toilet began to smell so bad that the residents sealed the bathroom shut with tape.
McGraw said that he called PMS numerous times to get the toilets fixed. Sometimes someone responded. Sometimes no one did.
When PMS did fix the toilets, McGraw said, one flush later the toilets were clogged again.
According to the Kansas Landlord Tenant Act, landlords have two weeks upon notification to make a good faith effort to complete necessary repairs. The act also mandates that landlords, "maintain in good and safe working order and condition all electrical, plumbing, sanitary, heating, ventilating and air-conditioning appliances."
Lawrence housing codes define inadequate sanitation as a "lack of, or improper water closet, lavatory, bathtub or shower."
Cafe, 700 New Hampshire St., each time they needed to use the bathroom while they waited for a toilet to be repaired.
"The management companies are looking at the bottom line." Dunn said. "Nobody's connected."
McGraw and his roommates drove to Borders Boarding Mode.
One toilet was replaced a week later. The other was never unclogged.
Dunn said that management companies often can not make major repairs on a property without permission from the owner. Out-of-town
Lawrence landlords with most complaints
And nothing in the
Lawrence City Code says it needs to be — only one toilet per living unit must be functional.
No need to renovate
Currently workers are putting a coat of paint on one of the houses owned by James Dunn, president of Landlords of Lawrence Inc. Another crew is renovating another house.
"I feel like it's part of my mission," Dunn said. "If I'm going to own the properties, you gotta keep working on them."
But other landlords call him crazy, Dunn said.
Rental housing in the Oread Neighborhood isn't kept up because there is no financial incentive to keep them in tip-condition, he said.
"Students pay attention to the paint on the walls, the size of the floorspace or if there's a dishwasher," Dunn said. "They're not going to care about wiring upgrades and whether there's insulation in the walls.
"Students have no experience discriminating between run-down houses and older houses that have been renovated."
It doesn't help things that many Oread Neighborhood houses are old, owned by out-of-town landlords and managed by management companies, he said.
owners find it diffi cult to hire qualified tradesmen to make repairs because so many workers are busy with new construction in Lawrence "I would be the first one."
admit that we have some bad landlords in Lawrence — what you would call slumlords," said Bob Ebey, vice president of Landlords of Lawrence Inc. "The people who belong to our group take care of their properties."
Of the top five violators of city housing codes, only Paul Horvath, owner of Morningstar Management, is a member of Ebey's group, Ebey said.
Rental housing is a good investment, landlords said.
Vacancies cause more concern than low rents, and that has yet to be a problem, even with the recent apartment boom in Lawrence, Ebey said.
Del Hedgepath, who became a millionaire while renting properties, said he would still be a landlord if he had to do it again.
No oral agreements
No one protects the rights of renters
In the lease they signed, PMS pledged to have the house cleaned.
When McGraw and Batten first moved in, the house was filthy, he said.
City government takes side of landlords in disputes
By Dan Curry and Heather Woodward
Kansan staff writers
Lindsay Laricks had lived in her apartment at 738 1/2 Rhode Island St. for three months when she began to notice a mysterious smell.
Then she spoke with the tenants who lived below her.
She cleaned the place from top to bottom, but still it lingered.
"I found out that the foundation had started to crumble," said Laricks, Overland Park senior. "Sand, rock and cement was falling into the basement, causing the plumbing to back up."
Raw sewage filled the basement. Old furniture left by the former tenant and a washer and dryer soaked it up, causing the smell to linger.
She also discovered mice.
The ceiling leaked, faulty electrical wiring caused lamps to short out, not all of the windows had screens and the front porch was sagging.
"I went through about four boxes of poison while I lived there," Laricks said. "There was one closet I knew they were getting in through. I could hear them running around in the walls. I found one dead mouse in my dresser. It wasn't sanitary."
Laricks said her landlord, Richard Kershenbaum, manager of technical services at Academic Computing Services, was unresponsive to several attempts to reach him by telephone.
So she turned to the city for help.
When trying to get repairs done, tenants can sometimes have the cards stacked against them on multiple levels. Landlords can be slow to make repairs, but city building inspectors can be just as slow to force a landlord's hand.
Filing complaints
To file a complaint, tenants must write a letter to the Building Inspections Department. Without written documentation, building inspectors cannot legally enter a property.
But it is only through filing a written complaint that the department ever finds out about problematic properties or landlords. It is not the policy of the office to proactively enforce the housing code on any property that is not new construction.
A minimum-housing complaint ranges from lack of heat, electrical problems, plumbing and sanitation problems to insect or rodent infestation. Severe structural-blight complaints vary from roofs that sag and unsteady porches to crumbling foundations and falling gutters.
"Unless there's a complaint, we don't find out about it," said Jim Sherman, a building inspector.
Any violations found on newly constructed properties are cited in a memo to the owner, who is expected to bring the property up to code expeditiously — usually by the next day, inspector Barry Walthal said.
Seven building inspectors in addition to chief inspector Gene Shaughnessy work to enforce the Lawrence building and housing codes. Six out of seven of the inspectors inspect uninhabited construction or violations of other city ordinances.
A typical day
Inspectors also spend much of their time citing zoning, environmental, weeds, sign and site plan violations. The Kansan obtained a copy from the city office of all city code violations that the office has handled from 1994 to 1999. Based on a Kansan analysis of the records, only 188 of the 4,651 violations are severe structural blight or minimum housing.
Shaughnessy said that in addition to enforcing the housing and building codes, the office also was responsible for enforcing 18 to 20 other city ordi-
INSPECTION TIMELINE
Number of minimum-housing and severe structural-blight inspections for 1994-1999
1994: 22 inspections, inspection on average every 17 days
1995: 35 inspections, inspection on average every 10 days
1996: 42 inspections, inspection on average every 9 days
1997: 23 inspections, inspection on average every 16 days
1998: 32 inspections, inspection on average every 11 days
1999: 34 inspections, inspection on average every 11 days
For all five years, inspections on average every 15 days
Source: Kansan analysis of city records
nances.
Only Jim Sherman is responsible for inspecting properties about which the office has received complaints from tenants.
And that's not his only job.
Shaughnessy said Sherman was also the city's building permit coordinator and occasionally filled in for other inspectors.
Based on Kansan analysis, the office has conducted an average of one minimum-housing or severe structural-blight inspection every 15 days. (This number does not account for weekends and holidays when the office is closed; it's simply based on the number of days between inspections.)
Sluggish results
Because only Sherman responds to housing-code complaints, tenants, already frustrated by the inaction of their landlords, may face a long wait before an inspector can produce action from their landlords.
On Oct. 1., Sherman inspected Kershenbaum's property on Rhode Island at Laricks' request. He found 10 violations of city housing codes. Those violations included:
But Kershenbaum didn't receive written documentation of the violations until at least a week later when Sherman wrote him a letter on Oct. 8.
Bacteria can be in the basement
An innermost drain in the basement
Electrical and plumbing work done without securing the proper building permits
It takes an average of five days before the building inspector sends a letter after an inspection, according to Kansan analysis of the 88 housing inspections where it could be determined that an inspector sent a letter.
- An inoperable smoke detector on the second floor
Sometimes building inspectors call landlords to inform them of violations rather than sending a letter, Shaughnessy said.
Excess debris in the basement
"If there is a moderate violation like bad plumbing, I won't give them more than 30 days," Sherman said. "If the violation is more of a nuisance, like roaches, I might go up to 45 days."
But the first deadline for having all violations up to code is not always binding. Based on a Kansan analysis, on average it takes 95 days to close a minimum-housing or severe structural-blight case.
"Under certain circumstances, we have to extend that when we talk to an owner who can't get the proper people in; there's nothing they can do about that," Shaughnessy said. "Then we try to work it out in reasonable time period."
Landlords are not always licensed to do complex electrical or plumbing repairs and are at the mercy of such workers' tight schedules. Increased development in West Lawrence has many such experts working full time on new construction.
Kershenbaum said he found that to be the case with his property at 738 I/ Rhode Island St.
"Especially lately, if you're not a big landlord, and you can't give plumbers and electricians lots of business, you're not a priority." Kershenbaum said.
When landlords fail to rectify violations, Sherman said he would send a second correspondence, and if that didn't produce results, seek help from the city prosecutor's office. However, that has only happened a sprinkling of times since 1994, according to city records.
In cases where Sherman does send violations to Lawrence Municipal Court, it is after repeated inspections, repeated extensions granted to the landlord and a final notice sent weeks before a complaint is filed.
Sherman said landlords generally fixed the problem or chose to sell the property.
In cases where Sherman declares a property uninhabitable, the tenant has 24 hours to vacate, unless the situation is immanently life-threatening.
Sherman gave Kershenbaum until Nov. 12 to correct each of the 10 violations for a reinspection. Sherman said on Dec. 6 — more than two months after the initial inspection — that he had yet to reinspect the property because an earlier date set by Kershenbaum did not fit into his schedule.
Frustrated by the magnitude of the problem combined with the lack of results to fix it, Laricks decided to move rather than wait for the violations to be brought up to minimum-housing code standards.
Wanting out
One pattern that frustrates both landlords and building inspectors is tenants who use small violations as excuses to break their leases. Kershenbaum said he suspected other tenants attempted to do just that.
"It really was a miserable experience for us," he said. "They made it very hard because they were not understanding when we couldn't get someone in there immediately."
Shaughnessy would not comment on the phenomenon but acknowledged that the problem was a major one.
"The biggest time is in the fall, when we get six to eight cases per year." he said.
Shaughnessy said that although inspectors could not verify their suspicions, they sometimes found violations that could have been created by the tenant who had called to complain.
However, Shaughnessy said inspectors were tied by the housing code and could not disregard violations on a property because of speculation about a tenant's motivation.
"We don't take sides," Shaughnessy said.
However, according to city records, one such case occurred on Oct. 24,1997.
That day the inspector wrote, "Tenant had small problems that needed corrected. My feeling is she wanted out. No further contact. Case closed."
If a tenant wished to find out the history of a property before deciding to move in, the records
In Lawrence, there have been 188 housi
1994. Each complaint represents one or
violation, including severe electrical, plur
problems. Of the 188 complaints, 135 we
Thirty-six of the 135 minimum housing c
kept at the Building Inspection Department would not be much help.
After one year, the department destroys the hard copies of the letters that detail the violations, which it sends to landlords.
There is a master computer where inspectors log their daily progress on properties. Shaughnessy, said that the data was kept primarily as personal notes and that the office never had done analysis of the data to find out who the repeat offenders or properties were.
Beyond the date of inspection, an ambiguous closing date and the type of violation, further information is often vague if not completely absent. The name of the landlord is not always listed. According to a Kansan analysis of city records, 30 percent of the minimum-housing or severe structural-blight violations did not indicate when a reinspection was done or in some cases any data beyond the date of the initial inspection.
The records do show that the department often does not reinspect a property unless a tenant calls a second time to complain.
On Feb. 14, 1996, an inspector wrote, "I have not heard further complaints from the tenant. Case closed unless I hear otherwise."
- On another property the same day, an inspector wrote, "Tenant has not called back, things must be OK."
■ On March 10, 1998, an inspector wrote, "Unless I hear from the tenants, case closed."
On July 6, 1999, an inspector wrote, "Did not think tenant wanted letter sent. Received call."