That's weird. Last year, in an effort to whip landlords into shape, the city changed its housing-code enforcement policy because neighbors were unhappy with the old method. Residents in Roosevelt and West Seattle asked the city to come down harder on property owners who leave junk in their yards and let buildings rot. So city housing inspectors switched from a warning to a punishment system. Now, instead of giving out a Notice of Violation to an errant property owner, the city issues fines.
According to the most recent report released by the city's Department of Design, Construction, and Land Use (DCLU), out of 160 citations the DCLU handed out, only 24 percent of those fined corrected the problem. By way of comparison, 64 percent of those who received an old-fashioned DCLU violation notice shaped up. Despite these weak results, the report recommends sticking with its new system of fining landlords because it takes less time than suing them--the city's only recourse against defiant violators in the previous system.
Neighbors in North Seattle who thought the city was taking care of the problem are disappointed. "The system doesn't work," says Willie Williams, head of University Park Community Club, one of the groups that pressured the city to step up the enforcement of housing regulations near the University of Washington. "The city of Seattle has been unwilling or unable to try and find ways to actually enforce the law," says Williams.
Meanwhile, the situation in South Seattle is as disastrous as ever. Witness one Rainier Beach apartment building. At the Henderson Arms near Rainier Avenue South, rats crawl under an overflowing dumpster and past a pile of trashed mattresses in the parking lot. A fire damaged three of the Henderson Arms apartments on October 15, and the building's blackened corner accentuates its slovenly appearance.
Activists are appalled that buildings have gotten this bad. "The law gives landlords so many loopholes," says Mariana Quarnstrom, head of the Southeast Seattle Crime Prevention Council. "We have several places right now that are just really run down."
The DCLU doesn't know what to do. DCLU Code Compliance Manager Robert Laird seems disenchanted with both the old and new violation policies. He says neither fines nor warnings are aggressive enough tactics to push landlords to fix substandard housing, since both depend on complaints coming in.
Laird points out that the problem is worse in poor neighborhoods. They have cheaper and more run-down properties. According to Laird, this is compounded by the fact that poor people are less likely to complain about problem buildings, because they're afraid of rent increases. "If we go in and make the landlords fix up the buildings, they're likely to jack up the rent. It's a Catch-22," he says. The DCLU gets thousands of housing and zoning complaints. (Last year, the agency fielded nearly 3,000 of them.) The DCLU only has 12 inspectors to handle the load. "The people who need our services the most tend to be the least likely to call and ask for them," says Laird.
While Laird throws his hands up, neighbors and city council members propose what they see as an overdue fix. They want the DCLU to step up its enforcement again. Last week, the Rainier Valley Chamber of Commerce passed a resolution to ask the city to hire six code enforcement inspectors.
"The DCLU can't go on the prowl to find violations, but [the agency] has to follow up on complaints, and we don't think there are enough inspectors to do that," says Dawn Blanche, executive director of the Rainier Valley Chamber of Commerce.
City Council Members Judy Nicastro and Richard Conlin are also crafting proposals specifically to beef up the city's ability to enforce its laws. They both want to add dollars to the DCLU's budget for more enforcement inspectors.
Hiring more inspectors seems like a good idea. Unfortunately, a beefed-up staff probably won't make much of a difference in the condition of cheap apartments like the Henderson Arms, which has a DCLU rap sheet dating back to the '80s.
Henderson Arms property owners, Yao Seng Tarng and Vern Nai, didn't answer phone calls.
