City moves to curb ‘disorderly houses’

SOUTH PORTLAND — South Portland is one step closer to making landlords responsible for disruptions in the buildings they own.

In a unanimous vote Monday, the City Council approved the first reading of a “disorderly house” ordinance, which calls for a compulsory meeting between city officials and building owners if police are called to a property three times within a 30-day period. The trigger is four police visits if a building has between six and 10 units, and five at a larger complex.

The meeting, which must take place within five days of notice by the city, must result within one week in a written contract in which the property owner agrees to “take effective measures to resolve the disorderly house.”

Although the ordinance does not specify what constitutes resolution, or “effective measures,” it does carry a penalty of $1,000 to $2,000 for “each day of violation.” In addition, the city may condemn and post a building against occupancy if officials are not satisfied with the landlord’s attempts to resolve behavior on his or her property deemed to be a “chronic unlawful or nuisance activity.”

Although nearly a dozen residents spoke in favor of the ordinance proposal – almost all of whom cited recent issues on Free Street, where two buildings have been the cause of 97 police calls in the past 22 months – only two spoke against the measure.

Micah Smith, who owns a four-unit building on Ocean Street, said he feared the ordinance could be “used as a weapon” against landlords, either by the city or by tenants.

Smith later faulted the ordinance for laying enforcement on a single city agent.

“While the ordinance is aimed at absentee landlords and active criminals who are tenants, its language makes no distinction between criminal behavior and nuisance complaints. It’s all open to interpretation by whoever is in enforcement,” he said.

A similar note was struck by William Laidley, although in less diplomatic terms.

“There is a real tendency of this council to over-regulate the city,” he said. “You cannot control people. That may be news to some of you, but we do not need a police state for what is a nuisance, more than anything.

“The council has at various times tried to protect us from bees, tattoos, chickens, slingshots, fireworks and now noise makers,” said Laidley. “It feels like some would like to have this be a gated community, but this is a city, it’s not a forest. People make noise. People live. People bump up against each other in any number of ways. That’s reality.”

However, to those who urged the council to adopt the ordinance, the issue was a question of personal safety more than one of public peace.

Christine Marshall railed against comments made by Councilor Tom Coward, who compared the ordinance to “swatting a gnat with a sledgehammer,” when the issue was first raised at a Sept. 12 council workshop. Ironically enough, said Marshall, one recent incident on Free Street involved a person wielding an actual sledgehammer.

“With all due respect,” she said, “I am that gnat who is in very real danger of being hit by a sledgehammer. The situation is, in a word, terrifying. I do not exaggerate.”

“I am very upset,” agreed Lynn LaRochelle, who complained of frequent SWAT team trips to her neighborhood. “I do not want to hear my daughter say, every single day, ‘Mom, can you just sell the house? Can we place move?’

“Please,” LaRochelle pleaded, “make my neighborhood safe. Let my daughter be proud of where she lives.”

Rick LaRochelle echoed his wife’s comments when he recalled living on Portland’s Munjoy Hill 40 years ago.

“That was the Hell’s Kitchen of the state of Maine. You didn’t tell anyone you were from Munjoy Hill back then. It wasn’t something anybody was proud of, because of the type of neighborhood it was. Well, here I am on Free Street and it’s like living that all over again.”

Both LaRochelles promised to call each City Council member at his or her home, any time, day or night, whenever police sirens sounded in their neighborhood. Councilor James Hughes jokingly called that tactic a “very effective” way of focusing the attention of his peers. However, councilors seemed even more impressed by the testimony of Trish McAllister, neighborhood prosecutor for the city of Portland.

McAllister said Portland has had a disorderly house ordinance on the books for many years, but it was only on May 4 that trigger levels were lowered to those being considered in South Portland.

Before that, it took eight police calls in a 30-day period to prompt city intervention. At that time, Portland sent courtesy “hot spot” letters to landlord after the fourth police visit.

“We sent out 40 of those letters between May and December of 2010,” said McAllister. “The same properties kept getting the hotspot letters and nothing happened. That told us we needed a tool to force the landlords to come in and speak to us and possibly face penalties. That’s the only way they took things seriously, to do what they should have been doing all along.”

Then, when the trigger was lowered to three police calls in 30 days, McAllister’s work jumped from three actual disorderly houses in all of 2010 to 21 in the past four months.

“Of those, we have met with 16 property owners and worked out resolution plans,” said McAllister. “Typically, those involve the eviction of certain problem tenants. We also get criminal trespass authorizations from the landlords so that police can more easily arrest certain individuals.”

In one particular case, McAllister spoke of building that was “a nightmare” for neighbors, with an average of 25 police calls per month during last summer.

“Pretty much every day the police were there,” said McAllister. “There was zero oversight or control of this property by the landlord. He didn’t even know who was in the building. He literally had no idea who is tenants were.”

After the landlord failed to take corrective action, McAllister filed a court action.

“On the evening of trial, when I explained that I would go in and ask the judge for a minimum civil penalty of $27,500 – and the maximum was in the half-million dollar range – he agreed to make some changes,” said McAllister.

In return, Portland waived the fees and, by May, police action at the building had fallen “by 80 percent.”

Although Smith said it is very hard to evict a tenant in Maine, while Laidley predicted a city “embroiled” in constant lawsuits, McAllister said neither had proven to be the case in Portland.

“Frankly, as a lawyer, I thought I’d be suing people all over the place this summer,” said McAllister. “But I haven’t brought one suit. I’m not even close to one, despite the 21 designations. It’s really working surprisingly well. The landlords realize we’re serious about this.

“I’m not actually getting requests for the disorderly house letter,” said McAllister. “Landlords are actually taking it into court and showing the judge – ‘Look, I’ve got the city after me. I’ve got to get rid of this guy.”

Police Chief Ed Googins, who would administer the ordinance in lieu of a neighborhood prosecutor like McAllister, said that, if the ordinance passed as drafted, it could immediately prompt intervention measures at 16 properties, on Free, Mildred, Pearl, Sawyer, School and Westbrook streets, and on Rollins Way. All would have tripped the ordinance at least once based on police action through the past four months, said Googins.

Coward and Councilor Tom Blake – speaking from the audience after recusing himself as a local landlord – have suggested that a disorderly house ordinance would not really cure South Portland’s woes. It would merely relocate them. However, Mayor Rosemarie De Angelis and others have said that’s part of the problem. Because similar rules have been adopted in Portland, Biddeford and Westbrook, both bad landlords and bad tenants have followed the path of least resistance straight into South Portland, they say.

And as those people have moved in, others have moved out.

“I have friends who have moved because of the challenges they’ve had in the city,” said De Angelis. “What is most important to me is that we have a well-managed city where people want to live.”

A final reading and passage of the disorderly house ordinance is expected at the council’s Oct. 3 meeting. As an ordinance change, it will require a roll-call vote with five councilors in favor for adoption.

That seems likely. Although Coward asked for additional debate at the council’s Sept. 26 workshop session, the only substantive change requested thus far has been a call, led by Councilor Patti Smith, to raise fines even further.