City needs to crack down on slumlords
On Tuesday evening Uniontown Mayor James Sileo presided over a council meeting where code enforcement officer Myron Nypaver once again begged the city to crack down on slumlords. The following day he joined the Fayette County Housing Authority in celebrating the renovation of 11 townhouses in the city’s East End.
These appearances are not unrelated and the mayor and council must take heed of Nypaver’s warning: the blight that occurred in the East End has crept relentlessly to the Gallatin Avenue area. It must be stopped.
Both neighborhoods have unique characteristics yet they share a common destroyer: absentee landlords who buy up property cheap, who are miserly when it comes to repairs and who lease the units to tenants who are allowed to frolic in squalor.
The East End’s downfall came first. The housing authority should be congratulated for being one of the few landlords in that area that takes care of the property and evicts tenants who do not.
It can justly be argued that the housing authority spent way too much taxpayer money, about $90,000 for each unit, to rehab the Coolspring Street townhouses. But at least it intends to maintain that investment by conducting frequent inspections and through its intolerance to allow criminals to reside in its property.
Board members and the mayor spoke during the ceremony about how they hoped that the new homes would spur pride in the tenants and that neighbors would want to work hard on their property in a keep-up-with-the-Joneses fashion.
Sileo commented, “With all the drugs, crime and vandalism in our community – and we have to admit we have it – this is one way that we can eradicate that.”
But it is a costly venture, nearly $1 million for just a handful of homes. And it was footed entirely by the government. The solution will not come from the government stepping in with an expensive fix. Rather it will come from a government that will not tolerate crime, filth, rodents and other public health hazards.
So far Uniontown has not become nearly tough enough. Sure, it has in recent years spent grant money demolishing some of the worst houses. But still other, once beautiful homes in the Gallatin Avenue area have fallen into multi-tenant slums. Decent, law-abiding families no longer believing the city will step in to stop the decay are forming an exodus.
“The good people in these areas are leaving. The properties are being bought cheap,” Nypaver said. This just adds to the problem.
The city did tweak its zoning ordinance two years ago to prohibit converting single-family homes into apartments without approval from the zoning hearing board. For that it should be commended, but the mayor and council need not stop there.
Nypaver who holds the dual role as the city’s fire chief offered a few suggestions, including expanding the city’s housing rehab program to include tenant-occupied along with owner-occupied houses.
The mayor and council should also direct the solicitor to determine if there are any other ordinances it can enact to take quicker, harsher steps against slumlords. The current posting and citing process through the district court system is steeped in delays and appeals. But if that is the only avenue available then the city must become so tenacious, so persistent in its pursuit to require these landlords to halt spreading blight that it becomes too expensive for them to continue fighting.
The message could eventually sink in that Uniontown will no longer tolerate the destruction of its neighborhoods. But to start sending that message the mayor and council need to do more than listen to Nypaver’s periodic pleadings. They must back his efforts by giving him the money and resources to fight blight.