Real-estate group lambastes city program

By DAVID SKOLNICK

skolnick@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

A 70-member real-estate organization is criticizing the city’s new rental-registration program, saying it’s “another poorly conceived feel-good placebo” effort that will have a negative effect on Youngstown.

But Mayor Jay Williams said the program is in place to protect the rights of tenants, and responsible landlords shouldn’t feel threatened by it.

The owners of about 6,000 rental properties in the city will be required to pay the city $20 per unit for an annual rental-property license under the program that started this month. If a property is a multifamily dwelling, the first unit is $20; for each additional unit in the structure, it’s $15.

Landlords have until June 30 to register with the city. The city hired the Youngstown Metropolitan Housing Authority to do annual inspections of rental units at $15 each.

Sherry DeMar, president of the Mahoning Valley Real Estate Investors Association, said Friday that the program does nothing to remove blight, it isn’t financially sustainable and, it unfairly impacts good landlords.

“It’s another cost added to us that won’t do one thing for the neighborhoods,” said DeMar, whose real-estate company owns 100 units and manages 150 other units in Youngstown.

Williams said DeMar’s “barely coherent tirade” is “revealing and ironic when you consider that some people who themselves live in quality neighborhoods become enraged and indignant when the tenants who provide their income could unthinkably be afforded a similar opportunity.”

Good landlords will benefit from quality neighborhoods, Williams said.

“As for those landlords who were content to siphon money out of neighborhoods with little or no regard for the decent, safe and sanitary conditions of others, well, I suppose a day of reckoning has come,” he said.

City officials should focus on abandoned properties if they want to see improvements in its neighborhoods, DeMar said.

“The politicians and bureaucrats of Youngstown have shown that they do not respect cooperation, so the MVREIA leadership team is preparing for confrontation,” she said. “We are consulting with lawyers about challenging Youngstown’s rental-property registration/inspection program with lawsuits on legal, procedural and constitutional issues. Legal battles are long, expensive ordeals but are necessary when facing unreasonable opposition. We regret that the taxpayers are going to have to pay, yet again, for the ignorant arrogance of politicians and bureaucrats.”