Landlord gets to-do list at his properties
Joseph S. Alaura paced the porch of a South Side rental property he owns, waiting in the bitter cold yesterday for Columbus code-enforcement officers to arrive to inspect the house.
Alaura has a lot on his mind. He was just released from jail after a judge sent him there for violating his probation for code-enforcement issues.
And now inspectors were beginning a four-day sweep of his properties to make sure they meet city code. The city’s list includes 26 properties in Alaura’s name, plus two others tied to him by a land contract.
If Alaura fails to fix them in the time given to him, he could end up back in jail. “We’ll do our best,” a soft-spoken Alaura said.
His housing-code failures were highlighted in The Dispatch’s recent Legacy of Neglect series, which documented systemic failures in Columbus’ housing-code system.
He is among approximately 100 repeat offenders who The Dispatch found ignored orders to fix problem properties for so long that the city filed criminal or civil charges against them. Each has had at least three court cases for housing-code violations. Few, however, faced stiff penalties for ignoring the law.
Since 2008, the city has issued Alaura 69 notices to fix problems at his properties. In some cases, his tenants were living in houses without running water. One woman lived in a house with so many problems that the city declared it unfit for habitation and evicted her.
In October, Franklin County Environmental Judge Daniel S. Hawkins sent Alaura to jail for 60 days for ignoring orders to fix code violations.
Hawkins released him after 30 days on the condition that Alaura allow code officers to inspect every house he owns in Columbus inside and out, plus hire a management firm.
This is the first time that inspectors have laid eyes on many of the houses, despite Alaura’s lengthy record.
For decades, the code-enforcement department has responded only to complaints and did not ferret out problems on its own. After The Dispatch series, however, Mayor Michael B. Coleman ordered the department to adopt a more proactive approach.
Yesterday, code officers visited nine of Alaura’s properties on the South and West sides. Two of their visits were to houses that have never been inspected. The others all have had at least two violations since 2008, city records show.
Inspectors wrote up a series of violations at the first four South Side homes they toured, including a missing smoke detector in an attic at one house, water-heater repairs that might have been done without a permit at another, and a bathroom without an exhaust fan at a third.
At the first house, at 698 Stewart Ave., inspectors found bare, rotted wood outside, and missing gutters and fascia boards. They also found a broken front window. (That was easy to spot: A cat climbed through it.)
Alaura will need to fix the problems that code inspectors find by the dates officials set, said Josh Harmon, chief environmental specialist for the Franklin County Environmental Court.
“We’ll not give him much leeway with this,” Harmon said.
The landlord can fix, sell or demolish the properties. Officials will present to the court a plan for Alaura in mid-January.
Alaura said he started buying rental properties about 25 years ago, when he delivered pizzas. “ Trying to get some sort of retirement thing going,” he said.
He became a full-time landlord 10 years ago.
“Low-income housing is not that easy,” said Alaura, who lives on a 30-acre farm in Cardington, about 40 miles northeast of Columbus. He also owns properties in Clark, Marion and Wayne counties.
Jail wasn’t easy either, he said. He also took on debt to pay $7,000 in attorney fees, he said.
Dana Rose, the city’s code-enforcement administrator, went on yesterday’s tour. He said that the city plans to conduct similar sweeps if they find code violations at houses owned by landlords who control many properties.
