There was a lot of finger pointing in City Hall yesterday about the slum housing problem; most fingers were pointed toward the courts.
What started as a discussion of efforts to put housing data in the city on-line, turned into more than an hour of discussion of the slum problem and whose fault it was. This turned into talk about a landlord who has been written for City Court a hundred times for a building on Grant Street which has been written for court 40-times; the front of the building fell off last year.
Chief Building Inspector Ron Collins says his people did their job on 65 Grant Street.
"The Inspections Department did their job, they got it in court. At that point, it's up to the judge," Collins said.
"The judge is the one that makes the decision, not the Inspections Department. We had multiple times where the judge has fined them and the court case is closed. We'll write it for court again the next day."
Many of the people in the Legislation Committee meeting support a second housing judge, saying the present judge is overloaded. Everyone admits the present system doesn't work very well.
Activist Paul Morgan says he dealt with the housing and inspections process at several locations. He points to a house on York Street with a hole in the roof and a blue tarpaulin nailed on it in the fall of 2013.
"By August, I'm like..there's still a hole in this roof that's not patched. Why? Well, it's been written for court. What does that mean? It means the courts are backed-up. It'll be three to six months," Morgan said.
"I have to be there in court to give the evidence that the judge needs to impact this situation where a house is at risk."
Morgan says a neighbor checked because the door was open and the pipes have burst and mold is developing and the owners live in Arizona.
