Westside Story

On August 1, 2016, at 7:00p I sat in a front row seat to observe Lakewood City Council process their decision related to the Rental Registration & Safety Inspection Program (RRSIP).

The City of Lakewood’s current proposed Rental Registration & Safety Inspection Program is an idea being considered to solve Lakewood’s slumlord problem. The solution method our city is considering for Lakewood’s slumlord problem can best be described as, INVOLVE & PUNISH EVERYBODY TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM. All good landlords, good property managers and good tenants […]

I have driven down Gravelly Lake Drive SW past Harold A. Allen Company for close to 5 decades. Hal Allen, second generation owner of Allen Company, was my friend, mentor, and employer when I served Harold Allen Company as an Associate Real Estate Broker and Commercial Manager in the 1970s and 1980s.

  One of my avid readers, following my series of articles written in my effort to help the Lakewood City Council and Lakewood citizens understand how unfair and wrong the proposed Rental Registration and Safety Inspection Program (RRISP) is, asked me an on target question. My reader asks, “How will the City of Lakewood Safety […]

Once upon a time, they made a place called City of Lakewood, Washington, not to be confused with the town of Lakewood up north in King County, Washington or Lakewood, Colorado or Lakewood, California for that matter. I am talking about our Lakewood.

Now that the City of Lakewood has changed the name of their proposed Rental Inspection Program (RIP) by adding the word SAFETY to create a new name which reads Rental Registration & Safety Inspection Program (RRSIP), it only makes sense for City Council to request that the city’s Public Safety Advisory Committee (PSAC) become involved […]

You would think I would have run out of material and would find myself unable to write one more article regarding Lakewood’s proposed Rental Registration & Safety Inspection Program (RRSIP). Amazingly the RRSIP is such a bad idea on so many levels, there seems to be no end to the negative concerns I can write […]

Our City of Lakewood is not the only city threatening citizens with what many consider to be unconstitutional rental inspection programs. Rental Inspection programs are breeding lawsuits all over our nation. If our city council decides to implement a rental inspection program, they may just be kicking over a lawsuit hornets nest.

  Lakewood’s city council is working hard to solve a problem everyone agrees is a problem, namely slumlord properties which produce terrible living conditions for some tenants renting in Lakewood.