Suburbs want landlords to curb problem tenants

Police responded to calls for service 173 times in less than two years for a single Elgin property. The house, in the 200 block of Ann Street, is now vacant, marked by the code enforcement department's red tag condemning the property.

Based on city ordinances, there was no legal recourse to force an eviction any sooner. Many in Elgin think that must change.

The Elgin Police Department, like those in other towns in the suburbs, has a crime-free housing program aimed at reducing criminal activity in rental properties. It also has a nuisance abatement ordinance that gives it the right to take landlords to court for refusing to evict certain tenants in order to remedy the problem.

But city officials want to give the ordinance sharper teeth and apply requirements of the program more broadly. Then record-breaking call volumes will be less likely for properties like the one on Ann Street, where complaints ranged from domestic violence to excessive noise.

The changes could be a couple months down the line, but Mayor David Kaptain said the sooner the better.

“These single homes are disrupting the lives of 20, 30, 40 people around them, and that's not acceptable,” he said.

Crime-Free housing started in 1992 in an Arizona department and has spread throughout the country. Schaumburg was one of the first Illinois departments to implement the program in 1999. Palatine started its program in 2003, Des Plaines followed suit in 2009 and Batavia is hoping to launch its own pilot program by January 2012.

It's a program founded on cooperation between police departments and property managers and aimed at improving neighborhoods. In most departments, crime-free housing is centered on education.

“Crime-free housing is about providing landlords with all the information they need in order to manage their properties the best way they can for the community's sake,” Elgin Police Lt. Glenn Theriault said.

Theriault joined Officer Chad VanMastrigt in developing Elgin's program in 2005.

Its goals are lofty, but some landlords don't enjoy the extra responsibility.

Jane Garvey lives in Glen Ellyn and owns properties in her own community as well as Wheaton and Des Plaines. Though Des Plaines is the only one of the three that has a crime-free housing program, Garvey has fought along with other landlords in the Illinois Rental Property Owners Association against a state law aimed at similar crime.

The law, which went into effect at the beginning of August, says landlords can evict tenants who commit any felonies or the most serious misdemeanors on the property. Garvey does not see it as an extra tool but a burden, just like the rules governing crime-free housing in communities like Des Plaines. And though she said the extra line in the lease is not a problem, it's more than the language.

“It's the attitude that's the big deal,” Garvey said. “The expectation that landlords should be responsible for the behavior of their tenants, and have some means of controlling it.”

Ultimately the burden of proof to evict a tenant still falls on the shoulders of the landlord — as does the cost and the time and energy for the proceedings. Police departments have no way to evict tenants. But the crime-free housing programs give them a chance to obligate landlords to do so.

Elgin modeled its first version of the program after Schaumburg's, but the department now looks to Palatine as the regional authority on crime-free housing.

Palatine Officer Tamara Gulisano runs the program. She said it has worked to change tenant behaviors and make the village a safer place.

Palatine's law says tenants who violate four village ordinances in a six-month period should be evicted. Violations include drug offenses, gambling and prostitution.

As part of the lease, tenants agree to the terms. Landlords go through a training course outlining the program. When the threshold is reached, the police department reminds landlords of their duty to evict and tenants are forced to move.

Gulisano said situations are viewed on a case-by-case basis in a search for a pattern of criminal activity.

“People make mistakes and they get arrested,” Gulisano said. “But when you're continually doing it, it's no longer considered a mistake; it's considered a lifestyle.”

Elgin's ordinance, as it is now, counts about a dozen call types toward the threshold for eviction. In Elgin it's three calls for service within 120 days for those specific offenses. But that is where some properties fall through the cracks. Calls to the house on Ann Street were dominated by domestic violence or loud music complaints, ensuring the threshold was never reached.

Elgin's mayor hopes noise complaints can be added to the list of offenses, strengthening Elgin's ability to crack down on problem properties.

Elgin also hopes to add crime-free housing cases to in-house adjudication proceedings rather than file cases in Kane or Cook County court systems.

Palatine already funnels its cases through its own adjudication process, speeding things up while still giving property owners the option of appealing in county courts.

Technically, landlords could lose their property and the right to rent under the auspices of nuisance abatement. But Elgin's VanMastrigt said that rarely happens and isn't the true goal anyway.

“The idea is not to take someone's property, but to abate the nuisance,” VanMastrigt said. “It's to remedy the situation.”

Police stress that this is a cooperative effort.

“It does take a combined effort,” said Palatine Officer Gulisano. “It can never be the police department answering these calls for service. Landlords do hold some responsibility.”

In Elgin, Theriault said when the crime-free housing program started, the city needed to force property owners into the seminars. But he said they were happy with the information and tips from other landlords by the time they left.

Elgin later launched Managers Against Crime meetings to create a network of building managers primed to keep each other in the loop for problem tenants and activity to watch for. Theriault said it has helped cut down on certain tenants being evicted from one property and moving to another nearby.

But there is still the option of moving from a town with crime-free housing to a town without it. Buffalo Grove and Libertyville are just two communities without the program.

Because tenants tend to cycle through rental properties, the officers running crime-free housing programs do not expect to finish their work anytime soon. But in Elgin at least, officials hope revising the program and related ordinances provides the tool for making the city an increasingly attractive place to live.

As part of that, VanMastrigt, who runs Elgin's program, said the division functions as a clearinghouse for information about the rental community. That can be passed along to the gang unit, drug unit or detectives, broadening its impact on policing.

“It's an excellent information-sharing tool to solve crimes in the city of Elgin,” VanMastrigt said.