'Problem properties' rules could be used against landlords who rent to students

A day after police and inspectors swooped down on a Blue Hill Avenue building nearby residents called a criminal warren, city councilors and lawyers began hammering out an ordinance for cracking down on owners of troubled apartments - including a provision that would require licensing for landlords with repeat offenses.

The council could vote next Wednesday on the three proposed ordinances, which would authorize a Problem Property Task Force to coordinate action against landlords who fail to curb problems, as well as a mechanism for billing landlords for police details stationed at properties until the problems are cleaned up. Mayor Menino recently signed an executive order to set up the task force.

Although criminal hives like 102 Blue Hill Ave. got the most attention, City Councilor Michael Ross and some of his neighbors on Mission Hill said they hoped the city would also use the measure as a lever against landlords who rent apartments to students.

One resident told councilors students are sort of a gateway drug to worse problems - including drug sales - and that she and other residents shouldn't have to put up with feeling like their neighborhood has become a college campus.

City Councilor Maureen Feeney emphasized licensing would only be a last step, and only for landlords with problems - not for owners of all of the city's roughly 170,000 rental units.

"Most of you will never, ever feel any effect," Feeney told landlords in attendance. "This is not a 'got you,' this is a 'we've had enough.' "

City Council President Steve Murphy said he is fed up with landlords who run "houses of havoc" that can cause "a rapid descent into the sewer."

"We are going to get tough with those who completely plague us," he vowed.

Skip Schloming, director of the Small Property Owners Association, said some problem properties may not be the landlords' faults - he blamed state laws that make it difficult to evict problem tenants and urged councilors to convince the state legislature to set up a rent escrow system, in which tenants fighting eviction would have to continue to pay rent, even if into an independent escrow account.

Schloming also said city inspectors need to stop pestering landlords with what he called minor complaints, such as missing window screens. Feeney, for the most part very sympathetic toward landlords, blasted Schloming for that "double standard," asking if he would tolerate living in a home with missing screens and said little things like that can lead to large things.

Feeney said she hopes to have a single ordinance ready for council action next week - drafted out of two proposed rules by the mayor and one by the council.