‘Enters’, as in crossing the threshold. To inspect stuff. For safety, or so we’re told. Which inspections include tidiness of the closets and cleanliness of the kitchen and bathrooms.
Without probable cause.
Steam-rolled, and we’re not talking potholes but people.
As Lakewood, Washington prepares to roll out its rental inspection program (and, given the controversy, roll over landlords and renters throughout the entire city), recently Lakewood’s Mayor Don Anderson spoke to fellow councilmembers “about his meeting with Congressman Heck on the City’s rental housing safety program” (p.026).
While there is nothing further in the minutes of the March 20 City Council Agenda Packet, given Heck is Washington’s 10th District Representative with an office in the other Washington, the conversation may have concerned the legal challenges to programs like Lakewood’s that are occurring across the country.
Take Pottstown, Pennsylvania for example.
There, the Institute for Justice has teamed up with a Pottstown landlord and his tenants to file a lawsuit, this past March 13, “challenging the government’s use of administrative warrants to search the homes of ordinary people who do not want inspectors inside.”
Like Lakewood, Pottstown “has a rental inspection law that forces landlords and tenants to open their properties and homes to submit to intrusive inspections. This ordinance allows the government to enter the most intimate confines of tenants’ homes—including bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchens and closets—in search of housing code violations, even when landlords and tenants object.”
Without “any evidence that anything is wrong with the home,” the local government “can get into the homes of ordinary, law-abiding citizens,” easier “than the homes of suspected criminals.”
Such rental inspection programs, says the Institute for Justice, “give the government the green light to conduct blanket searches of innocent people’s homes without their consent and are an end-run around constitutional protections for property rights.”
Meanwhile, in a familiar rental refrain sung by Lakewood’s duet with its big city to the north – whose rental inspection program Lakewood referenced in creating its own – headlines of another law suit strike a similar discordant, sour and off-key note, or two, or three:
‘City robs landlords of basic rights,’ read in-part the headline of a March 15 article in American Thinker, a conservative daily online magazine which bills itself as providing “thoughtful exploration of issues of importance to Americans.”
Some excerpts of what’s happening in Seattle, according to Brian T. Hodges in his opinion piece, and the haunting melodic sense that we’ve heard this tune before:
“The city decided to treat every landlord as if he were . . . incapable . . . without government oversight. It’s like trying to prevent fistfights by shackling everybody’s hands.”
“With a heavy-handed new law . . . (the city) has set its regulatory crosshairs on landlords . . . regulations that . . . take fundamental freedoms away.”
“Landlords, it was alleged, can’t be trusted to make decisions . . . the only solution (the government solution) is to take away their right to make . . . decisions altogether . . . .”
“The new rule has just drawn a lawsuit from a number of mom-and-pop landlords, based on its infringement on constitutionally protected property rights. But its assault on good sense is just as compelling and should serve as a warning to the rest of the country.”
In Seattle, “Landlords . . . are simply collateral damage from the city’s desire to ‘unlearn’ its citizens.”
But what is good for the goose is good for the gander and in Lakewood, the City Council took it a step further and opted not to ‘learn’ its citizens at all.
A “robust tenant/landlord educational program” to ‘learn’ its citizens as to their rights and responsibilities under the already existing and extensive Landlord Tenant Act, was tossed in favor of Lakewood’s roll-out of its own version.
But increasingly across the country citizens are not rolling over.
An opinion piece about opinion pieces.
Hmmm. Seems familiar, somehow…
Mr. Ames,
You infer that Mr. Anderson is somehow wrong to write his opinion about other opinions, yet you add a 3rd layer of opinion by writing your opinion about Mr. Anderson’s opinion regarding other’s opinions.
How is it okay for you to write your opinion about Mr. Anderson’s opinion about other’s opinions, but it is not okay for Mr. Anderson?
No hard feelings. This is just my opinion.
Joseph Boyle
Lakewood enters crossing the threshold for safety. Roll over landlords throughout the entire city. Government’s use of administrative warrants to search the homes of ordinary renters who want inspectors inside. The city has to set its regulatory cross-hairs on landlords. Landlords can’t be trusted to make any decisions.
Thank you City of Lakewood Council for your Safety For Renters Program! We can’t wait for you to get started!!!
Love to C and P for the truth.
What you should mean is “Roll over renters……..” because they will be the ones searched and ultimately “rolled over” for this “administrative warrant” program……….not the landlords. Your phrase “….ordinary renter who WANT inspectors inside.” is misleading since renters don’t have a choice as to whether they want or don’t want inspectors inside: it’s mandated by RIP. “Landlords can’t be trusted to make any decisions.”??? They rented to you didn’t they and you signed the lease so who’s the bigger fool? Landlords vote in elections as do renters. Are we to assume that since they can’t manage their own affairs (given numerous methods already in place to do so) without a nanny council checking up on them that we can trust anyone they would elect to the city council? What a troll!
Mr. Anderson,
Excellent article. Thank you.
Does the city have a projected start date for their violation of civil rights program (VCRP)? If so, when?
It would constructive if you or I could be present for some of these “safety” inspections. Of course, the city will never let that happen. They will probably base their argument for not allowing us to be present on not wanting to violate the landlord’s or renter’s privacy and further their civil rights.
Of course the landlord or renter could invite us. Then we would have a right to be present with our cameras and “ink pens”.
There are some renters who would welcome the inspectors and some who will not.
I always thought a city council’s main purpose was to solve problems. Our city council does it backwards. Instead of solving a small problem for a few, they take a small problem and make it big problem for many.
Joseph Boyle
You’ve nailed it Joe: that’s how you grow government and the revenue to support it. Instead of governing by exception (i.e. going after the specific problem itself) they govern by letting the exception rule (going after everyone to find the specific problem). This is a characteristic of a low performing system and I think indicative of many such decisions made by city staff and council: it’s not just RIP! It’s not just a matter of “waste, abuse and fraud” but rather a matter of “process” which has within its structure built in purposeful inefficiencies designed to maintain and enlarge the bureaucracy. Government’s cry is “Give me more people, money and stuff so we can do it poorly faster!” A change of process is the last thing government will consider because it requires less “….people, money and stuff so I can do it better faster.” Shrinking government isn’t what government is about……unfortunately.
Lakewood enters crossing the threshold for safety. Roll over landlords throughout the entire city. Government’s use of administrative warrants to search the homes of ordinary renters who want inspectors inside. The city has to set its regulatory cross-hairs on landlords. Landlords can’t be trusted to make any decisions.
Thank you City of Lakewood Council for your Safety For Renters Program! We can’t wait for you to get started!!!
Love to C and P for the truth.