Much ado about nothing

Judge: City's landlord-tenant law 'may violate' due process.

We've been saying all along that the end result of this silly law is that we make criminals out of good citizens.

We are prosecuting citizens based on a law who's intent was to inform tenants of trash pickup, litter laws and code restrictions on the number of tenants. The intent might have been good, but is it really worth making criminals out of upstanding citizens to get it done? Just put a "public notice" in the paper advising them of the information and be done with it.

How much time do we need to spend on this? We have the Law Director spending time on this, we have 3 landlords having to spend time on this, now we've drug a Judge and his court into this mess. How much time and money do we have to spend in the courts to make sure someone knows when the trash pick -up is?

City Council could fix this, just get rid of the law. It serves no purpose that couldn't be handled in a less thuggish manner.

Previous posts on this, here and here.

More Nanny State

This is really what we need in Southeastern Ohio. More government telling us how to run our lives/businesses. On the one hand, the government wants to make it easier for low income folks to find low income housing. Then, on the other hand, we have the same government making it harder for landlords to offer this low income housing to low income folks.

The government needs to keep their nose out of both ends of this business and let the market run itself.

And, of course, we have the prerequisite fee. Like the one detailed in a previous post.

"Landlords must also pay a $20 landlord fee to the village to help finance the inspector’s operations. Those fees are due early this year."

You know, the fees charged by a department strictly just to fund the department, so they can hire people to collect the fees.

Someone with common sense in Athens?

Sean Jones wrote a recent letter to the editor about the insane requirement that landlords inform renters of certain information. But, more than that, they have to provide the city paper documentation stating that this has been completed. If the landlords do not comply, they are in violation and can be fined.

We suggested a common sense fix for this here a few weeks ago.

Here's Sean's letter to the editor.

"For example, quarter-page advertisements in the local papers once or twice a year would reach the general populace, and surely this would be less expensive than the personnel required to process, record and store thousands of three-page forms every year. Moreover, given that the majority of renters in the city of Athens are university students, would it be possible to work with the university to send an announcement via e-mail?"

Of course we are falling in the trap by giving alternative compliance options of actually giving this dumb resolution credibility. Why does Athens even need such a resolution to begin with?

We get the government we deserve

Lawsuit on horizon over landlord-tenant ordinance

"The attorney for a local landlords’ group confirmed Wednesday that he is preparing a lawsuit to challenge the city of Athens’ legally required landlord-tenant forms."



I've got an idea, why doesn't the city of Athens just put a public notice in the Athens Messenger with the information they want conveyed to the tenants? Instead they come up with a scheme forcing landlords to do the city's work. Of course, no one reads the Messenger and one has to pay to view it on the web.....but that's another story.