Mark Oprea
Public Health Director Dave Margolius holds up the Order To Vacate notice typically placed on homes plagued by lead.
On Wednesday morning, Mayor Bibb,and members of the city's departments of Public Health and Building & Housing convened in the lobby of 75 Erieview to announc prosecutions against 50 homeowners and limited liability corporations that have failed to reconcile code violations—namely, failing to clean up lead poisoning their tenants—in the past few years.
Dave Roberts, the city's chief of code enforcement, told the press that the 50 cases filed Monday could lead to fines of $1,000 to $5,000 (just over the cost of lead remediation), or up to 18 months in jail, if Housing Court Judge Moná Scott finds the sentencing reasonable.
Each of the 50 cases, Roberts added, received about 75 counts, essentially legal reprimanding after lead hazard control orders were ignored.
"They might need to replace windows. They might need to cover bare dirt. They might need to paint over where lead paint is becoming lead dust, which allows to poison the children," Roberts told the crowd. "And they did not comply. We ordered them to, but they did not."
The announcement comes on the heels of City Hall's momentous "Residents First" housing fix-up campaign, one that features some 23 updates to Cleveland's housing code, from fines for pest infestation to mandatory parking garage inspections every five years.
Mark Oprea
Sally Martin O'Toole, the director of Building & Housing, spoke judiciously at 75 Erieview about the impact legal prosecution will have on shifty investment opportunists. "It will make the bad actors want to leave—and that's fine. We're fine with them going away."
Such overhaul of the existing system, officials reminded the public Tuesday, would help reshape the city's housing stock by putting stricter penalties, like four-figure fines and jail time, on the negligent landlords used to side-stepping them in the past.
Wednesday's press conference also spotlighted what the city's painting as a unique cross-department collaboration, where the Mayor's Office's campaign against "predatory" landlords is well in line with the city's Law Department.
Bibb himself was clear-minded about a key topic on his own campaign trail in 2021, when the then-candidate spoke from the steps of a dilapidated home managed by Holton-Wise, a property group based in Old Brooklyn, about the negative impact out-of-state owners have on the city's sense of community. (Bibb cheekily called it an "eviction notice.") The speech, which Holton-Wise said amounted to "trespassing," ignited a political feud between Bibb and James Wise, the controversial mouthpiece of the property group. (Calls to Holton-Wise and John Holton were unreturned.)
When asked by Scene how he believes LLCs like Holton-Wise may respond—with ire? with compliance?—the mayor reaffirmed his initial attack.
"They're going to be on the defensive now," he said, "because now you have an administration that's going to be aggressive and innovative in terms of how we hold these immoral, morally bankrupt companies who prey on Cleveland's neighborhoods [accountable]."
Though City Council has yet to approve the suite of code amendments, this week has been a momentous one for Sally Martin-O'Toole, the Building & Housing director who spent years as South Euclid's housing director, holding out-of-state investors accountable for subpar maintenance. After similar code updates went into effect there, the suburb saw a 68-percent increase in building permits being pulled—meaning "people were fixing their homes, because they had to."
On Wednesday, Martin O'Toole, in an interview after the press conference, seemed more austere than celebratory, now that the code updates she'd been working on for six months were set for Council approval. She spoke steely about the near future, that the two dozen rewrites and additions could, by legal force, help create a more just and well-functioning community in Cleveland.
"This is a game changer," she told Scene. "So yeah, it will make the bad actors want to leave—and that's fine. We're fine with them going away."
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