Letter: Letters from landlords make you wonder if they doth protest too much
July 17, 2008
To the Editor:
Jim Phillips’ article (The NEWS, July 10) on reactions to the new mayor’s firing of the city code director is unexpectedly entertaining. Mr. Phillips interviewed a number of people who are apparently mostly owners of rental properties or have development projects, and their reactions to the firing are quite surprising. Quoted comments include: “...it might be an effort on the mayor’s part to be more arbitrary when it comes to code enforcement”; “...this is almost a witch hunt. We’re going to find out who the ‘bad people’ are, and we’re going to punish them”; “He [the mayor] fired Steve Pierson because Steve isn’t being hard enough on the ‘offenders,’ in their [alleged anti-growth interests] opinion… Everyone who doesn’t share his philosophy of life, he wants to see punished.”
If one is tempted to marvel at Jim Phillips’ ability to coax interview subjects into saying ridiculous things, one need only turn to the letters section, where one writer begins, “The mayor wants tougher code enforcement: Code officers carrying guns? Instructed to ‘shoot to kill’?”
Just what has sent all these worthy citizens into hysterics? According to Mayor Wiehl, it is his desire for a “more ‘pro-active’ enforcement of issues like trash, noise violations and maintenance of rental property by landlords.” Geez, no wonder they’re so freaked out! I’d run around in circles screaming, too, if someone expected me to take responsibility in any business I happened to run.
It’s funny how all the hyperbole just raises questions in the reader’s mind about why these landlords are given the vapors by being told the city code is going to be enforced, not arbitrarily, as the first speaker claimed, but perhaps more consistently, as the mayor suggests.
What are these guys so scared of? Maybe that the residency limits on rental housing will be enforced for the first time? This, of course, is a pocketbook issue for them and a quality-of-life issue for the rest of us. Are they afraid of being forced to ’fess up about how many people live in their properties, and forced to educate their tenants about city ordinances concerning trash, noise and the like?
Truly, their comments suggest more than anything else that landlords have been getting a sweet deal, and they’re afraid it’s going to end. Something tells me that they’re not going to get the sympathy they seem to expect. But they should relax about one thing: If this is a witch hunt, they can always plead the fifth.
Lisa Carson
Grosvenor Street
Athens
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