City focus on rental property problems

By CHRISTOPHER DIEM Journal Staff Writer
MARQUETTE — While vacant buildings, such as the old Catholic orphanage, seem to be the focus of attention for city officials lately, City Planner/Zoning Administrator Dennis Stachewicz Jr. said a more pressing problem for the city is rental housing that violates city codes.


He said the majority of landlords in the city maintain their properties and are easy to work with but some, particularly those that don’t live in the city, often ignore the condition of their property. About 21 percent of residential buildings in Marquette are rental properties, he said.


“In general, the International Property Maintenance Code is a problem in the city,” Stachewicz said, “particularly when dealing with rental property or with transient owners — people that don’t reside in the community but buy a rental home for their son or daughter while they go to (Northern Michigan University).”


The International Property Maintenance Code is an international standard for maintenance upkeep in buildings for safety issues. It ranges from obvious things such as busted doors, broken windows, faulty shingles to hard-to-discern conditions such as a faulty foundation.


“In general, the city does have a ton of International Property Maintenance Code issues because that was not enforced for a number of years,” Stachewicz said.


The city has adopted the IPMC by reference into the city charter. If a property has code violations, the city will send the property owner a letter stating what the problem is, how the city can be contacted and a deadline for contacting city officials. If no action is taken, a second letter is sent as a final notice which warns that a civil infraction will be filed if the city is not contacted by a certain date.


“If they fail to contact us by that point, there are a number of days before the fine is due,” Stachewicz said. “There have been folks that said ‘yeah there’s a problem with the building, but I need six months to fix it.’ We work with those folks and hold off on issuing fines.”


The first violation is about $50, with subsequent fines increasing up to $500, Stachewicz said.


“For someone to get a property maintenance code violation it has to be something obvious,” Stachewicz said.


Code violations are not the only problems that can arise between city officials and rental property owners. Stachewicz mentioned a house on Marquette’s east side that is actually zoned as an office.


“This guy buys it for his son while his son goes to college, rather than paying rent, and his son subleases it to three or four other kids,” he said. “Well now his son is done going to school and the guy wants to sell the house.


“Nobody’s going to buy it because they can’t get financing because it’s zoned office and it’s non-conforming and banks have really tightened up on that now because of the mortgage issue. So now we’re going to have a vacant home.”


Stachewicz said the owner is trying to work with the city to rezone the property as residential but the issue has not yet been resolved.