INC NEWS - Neighborhood makes move to improve rentals (today's N&O)

[John Schelp]

Neighborhood makes move to improve rentals
News & Observer, 27 August 2005

Weeds, peeling paint, cars parked in front yards -- if
not up on blocks -- drug dealing, frat parties. From
the unsightly to the criminal, the management and
monitoring of Durham's rental properties are
associated with problems.

"This is something I think is a really, really hot
issue in Durham," said Kelly Jarrett, a vice president
of the Old West Durham Neighborhood Association and
prime mover behind its Recommended Property Managers
Initiative.

A first for Durham (at least, as far as anyone knows),
the project has resulted in a set of screening
criteria for evaluating property managers, which the
association is using to identify recommended property
management companies.

Criteria include consistent screening of tenants,
building and lawn maintenance, whether leases address
explicit "quality of life" like noise ordinances and
front-yard parking, and willingness to work with
neighborhood associations.

"We're still working on hearing back from and getting
back with property managers," Jarrett said, but the
project has issued its first stamp of approval to
Apple Realty of Durham. Other neighborhood
associations may follow Old West Durham's example.

"I think it's a wonderful idea," said Ellen Dagenhart,
who circulated information on what Old West Durham is
doing among her neighbors in Trinity Park, and sees in
it benefits for landlords and tenants, as well as
neighborhoods. "It's a win-win-win."

It's not just neighborhoods. Last April, the city
sponsored a landlord training seminar that covered
fair housing, housing codes and keeping drugs and
gangs off rental properties. The seminar drew more
than 130 participants, who "represented more than
10,000 homes," said Yvonne Pena, director of the
city's human relations department.

"A lot of good things came out of it," she said,
adding that the city is in the process of publishing a
manual for rental-property managers and a training
program to go with it.

"I think it will help clean up," Pena said, "and
involve the landlords together in keeping up the
places."

Across the country, according to the 2000 U.S. Census,
renters occupy 33.8 percent of housing units; for the
Southeast, the figure is about 30 percent; in North
Carolina, 30.6.

For the city of Raleigh, the figure is 33 percent,
said City/County Planning Director Frank Duke. For
Durham, it's 51 percent.

"It's huge," said Duke. "We have a much greater amount
of rental housing than most communities."

Durham's high rate of renters is nothing new. The
percentage of rental households has far exceeded the
national and state figures for decades.

Duke could only guess at the reason. Pena said, "I
guess it has to do with the economy, and the cost of
housing is so high right now."

William M. Rohe, director of the University of North
Carolina's Center for Urban and Regional Studies, said
the reason could be the age of Durham's housing stock
and "who the housing was originally built for, which
income group."

A lot of Durham's dwellings, Rohe said, were
originally mill-village housing. "It's not
high-quality housing and, hence, it's less attractive
to somebody interested in buying." Buyers, he said,
are likely to favor "big, newer housing units" over
"small, old" ones, leaving property owners with little
choice but to rent.

Rohe has published extensively on the personal and
social benefits of home ownership, his research
confirming the conventional wisdom that
owner-occupation generally correlates with stable
communities of involved citizens.

"There are exceptions," he said. "I like to caution
people, it's clear that we need rental property." For
"perfectly understandable reasons," individuals cannot
afford and/or don't want to be homeowners, he said.

That said, "There's a lot more turnover in rental
housing than in owner-occupied housing. ...
Communities are not going to be as tight."

In Durham, the prevalence of rental property means
that its upkeep is a public concern, and when rental
houses or apartments become drug dens and eyesores
they are a public problem.

Bill Anderson, president of Durham's Inter
Neighborhood Council, said "negatively rented"
property costs residents, in terms of property value
and public expense. "We need to look at the cost....
break down the dollar effect of a drug house in
Durham," he said, for example, the cost of repeated
police calls.

"It's got to stop," said Ken Gasch, of the Colonial
Village neighborhood north and east of the Roxboro
Street-Club Boulevard intersection. "It's poisonous to
neighborhoods to have drug houses."

'Complicated issue'

One thing Kelly Jarrett said she has learned about
rental property: "It's a complicated problem that
looks different from different perspectives."

Landlords and property managers, she found, "feel,
often, they are an easy, visible target for people's
frustrations, and many things people feel frustrated
about are things they don't have control over." For
example, she said, when criminal activity moves in, or
"managing for owners who don't want to spend money" on
maintenance.

Chris McKeel, owner of Apple Realty, Old West Durham's
first designated Recommended Property Management
Company, said his company has "always had a good
working relationship with the [neighborhood]
association. ... We have the same goals."

He thinks, though, that the city, with its new
emphasis on landlord training, is "attacking the
problem from the wrong way.

"They continue to look at the landlords as the source
of the problems," he said. "Tenants need to be held to
higher standards. ...

"That property owner represented by a property manager
did not dump the beer cans or [put] the car on blocks.
... We do the best we can with the teeth we have," he
said, "but we also are getting very little help from
the city to hold tenants responsible."

Dagenhart, in Trinity Park, agreed.

"There are property managers who aren't as careful,
and there are tenants who don't behave as well," she
said. "But at the same time, property owners, their
hands are tied to a certain extent. ... If tenants
don't pay rent it can take a long time to get them out
of that property, and tenants may threaten the
property manager or owner if they try."

Tenants can also stall eviction by filing maintenance
complaints with the city, which an owner or manager
has to address, McKeel said. That eats up hours.

Sometimes, he said, "The easiest thing for a property
manager or landlord is to just let it ride."

Kelly Jarrett attended the landlord training seminar,
and it was her inspiration for the Property Managers
Initiative.

At the seminar, she said, "They didn't give us much
guidance on how to work productively with property
managers. We tried to come up with something that
would be proactive rather than reactive and
oppositional."

Ken Gasch said he expects Colonial Village will adopt
a code similar to Old West Durham's.

"We've had mixed experiences with property managers in
our neighborhood," he said, "and we'd like every
property manager to be profitable and have a great
business, but at the same time we'd like that property
manager to be responsible to our neighborhood."

Guy Solie, who owns rental houses in Trinity Park,
supports the Old West Durham initiative.

"I think it's great," he said. "The more people get
involved with this, the better."

Solie has been the target of criticism because of the
rowdy behavior of Duke University students who rent
some of his properties.

"If people would just make the effort to communicate
with each other," he said, "we could improve the
situation. Clearly, there's always this conflict of
lifestyles between undergraduates and the rest of us,
[but] these are our kids."

Jarrett said there are more than 100 rental properties
in Old West Durham, which extends from Broad Street
west to Hillandale Road and from Englewood Avenue
south to the Durham Expressway. A lot of the renters
are members of the neighborhood association. Old West
Durham's initiative, she said, is "an effort to do
something positive.

"Instead of being adversaries," she said, "could we
begin to look at this issue in a broader way, so
everybody's interests are served better?"