New bill to target run-down homes

Councilman William Peduto has drafted legislation that would require housing inspections for… Councilman William Peduto has drafted legislation that would require housing inspections for sections of Pittsburgh populated by students in order to save buildings from being damaged by negligent landlords and students.

These areas include most of Central Oakland and parts of North Oakland and Squirrel Hill. Peduto has been working on this bill with the Oakland Task Force and other community organizations.

A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article on Friday detailed Peduto’s plan. If passed, this bill would require all rented property in these areas to be inspected every three years. If these properties fail the inspections, the owners would be restricted from charging rent. If they pass, then property owners would have to pay a small fee for a certificate of livability.

Another part of the plan is to provide students with information packets to let them know their rights as tenants in Pittsburgh.

“It’s going to be a different neighborhood,” Peduto said.

He spoke of wanting to bring Oakland back to its “glory days,” saying it was once a great place to live and can be again. He wants to keep students in Oakland but also wants to bring more families and other non-student residents to the area.

Peduto cited absentee landlords as the chief problem. He said the city does not order most houses to be repaired until they’re falling apart, and a lot of the time landlords ignore these demands. His goal is to put the law on the side of the people who want to protect the neighborhood and not the ones who want to profit from it.

Sophomore Keith Devries of Bloomfield described his house as old, filthy, drafty and dirty. Part of his roof collapsed over the staircase the other day. The windows are covered with plastic to keep in heat. His landlord has never shown him the lease to the house, and he has no idea what his responsibilities are.

Devries recounted a story from when he first moved in. The grass in the front lawn was a foot high, and his landlord expected him to cut it using an old push mower.

Sophomore Danielle Tobias of Louisa Street went most of January without heat, her landlord ignoring her frequent complaints. She only recently had her heater fixed because her old landlord was bought out by a more responsible one.

Her apartment was also broken into, and her laptop was stolen. Her requests for more bars on the windows were also ignored by her old landlord.

Both students support this bill.

“I think it’s a great idea,” Richard Sass said, an Oakland landlord.

He agreed that negligent landlords are a big problem in Oakland, saying many landlords allow more people to live in buildings than are legally allowed.

Another Oakland landlord, Carl Washington, is also in support of the bill.

“A lot of kids are paying high amounts of rent for unsafe places,” he said.

Sass said that part of the blame for the damaged property belongs to students. He said he rarely rents his buildings to students because they typically don’t take good care of their residences. He added that he’s had student tenants move out without paying.

Devries said that his friends have a house in South Oakland that they don’t take care of and described it as “gone to hell.”

Some landlords may oppose the bill. The Post-Gazette article quoted John Kostelac, president of the Pennsylvania Landlord Legal Defense Fund, who said that for these areas to be singled out they must be “in jeopardy of disaster.”

“Whatever legal hurdles they throw at us, we will find a way to create a better quality of life in Oakland,” Peduto said, who is confident that the bill will pass.

If this bill is a success in Oakland, Peduto wants it to be expanded to the rest of Pittsburgh. He plans to have a public discussion in the near future for all Oakland residents, students and non-students alike.