Premium ContentMouse over Home then click on Premium Content for information.Never mind the ink being dry. An idea Mayor Jim Suttle floated this week — to use landlords to crack down on violent offenders — has drawn criticism even before a plan could be put to paper.
Omaha landlords, caught off guard by Suttle's State of the City address, were scrambling Friday to find out details about his idea to use them as a new front line against violent crime.
John Chatelain, president of the Metro Omaha Property Owners Association, said his group was not told of the plan before the speech.
"Suttle is admitting to his failed administration in fighting crime," Chatelain wrote in an email. "Obviously he hasn't the foggiest idea how to fight crime and he thinks he can delegate the job to the landlords."
Chatelain, who was a key figure in the failed recall of Suttle, said his group would be willing to listen if there were a reasonable plan to tackle violent crime. What such a plan could look like, though, he couldn't say.
Suttle gave no details in his Thursday speech.
"There is a strong correlation between substandard housing and criminal activity," he said. "This is why I will be issuing two executive orders next month that crack down on those who carry illegal guns and those who provide them shelter."
After his speech, Suttle said he wanted new "tools in our toolbox" to fight crime.
His spokeswoman, Aida Amoura, said the plan would target landlords in an effort to decrease violent crime.
Amoura said Friday that the plan is still very much a work in progress and that Suttle debated including it in his speech. The general idea is to use the city's building code as a way to pressure landlords who rent to violent offenders, she said.
"If you have a landlord that has to make repairs, the rent is going to go up," she said. "It's going to cost more, and it's going to push these people out."
John Benson, president of the Omaha-based backgrounding company TenantData, said he was besieged with calls from landlords who expect that Suttle's remarks will lead to new requirements on tenant screening.
As Benson sees it, the plan could make it difficult for offenders to live in Omaha at all.
"If somebody doesn't have a place to live, they're probably going to move on, whether that means they move on to Sioux Falls or Denver," he said.
Though he has clients around the country, Benson said he didn't know of any other cities pursuing such a strategy.
"I don't think it's going to gain much traction," he said.
About 4,000 building code cases are pending in Omaha, said Kevin Denker, the city's code enforcement manager.
Homes can be written up for broken windows, holes in the roof, missing gutters, bad stairs and a number of other problems. The majority of the open cases are east of 42nd Street, but no part of town is immune, he said.
Current policy calls for inspectors to check up on each case in more or less chronological order, he said. After a case is reviewed, it goes back to the bottom of the list until it floats to the top again.
Homeowners who are in violation of building codes have 60 days to begin making repairs. If a case shows no improvement, problem property owners can be ticketed for a misdemeanor and can spend up to six months in jail if convicted.
The plan also could be a form of the "broken windows" approach to combating crime pioneered by New York City in the 1980s, said Ronald Abdouch, executive director of the Neighborhood Center at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Under that scenario, the goal could be to cut crime overall by focusing on building code enforcement.
Neighborhood groups have been asking for more help with code enforcement, Abdouch said, but he had not heard anyone ask for special attention to landlords.
Rental properties don't necessarily equate to bad neighborhoods, he said. He pointed to Gifford Park, which has a high percentage of rental units.
"Their amount of crime is low. It's a great community," he said. "I don't think the two necessarily go hand in hand."
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402-444-3144, matt.wynn@owh.com
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