Cleveland City Council Passes Tougher Nuisance Law to Hold Property Owners Accountable

New nuisance laws, meant to fine property owners for rowdy tenant behavior or noisy homes, were passed by City Council this week. Credit: Manny Wallace

Landlords, beware: any of your tenants suspected of stunt driving, street takeovers or letting their car mufflers blare obnoxiously could lead to fines of $100 a day.

And being declared a nuisance.

That’s what City Council approved on Monday with a suite of new laws intending to lead to quieter streets and holding landlords—or literally anyone associated with a house—accountable for rowdy, reckless tenants.

The brunt of that new legislation buffs up pre-existing criminal law, which allows a property to be dubbed a nuisance without an actual arrest by Cleveland police. Instead, probable cause is enough: a tip from neighbors, a 911 call, and so on.

Sally Martin O’Toole, the director of Building & Housing, has acted as Mayor Bibb’s leader on a city-wide crackdown on negligent landlords for the past three years. Credit: Mark Oprea

The move can be seen as a part of the Residents First strategy package that Mayor Bibb, and Director of Building & Housing Sally Martin-O’Toole, are using to clean up streets of homes that have been abused for years by negligent owners.

“The revised language grants [Martin-O’Toole] flexibility to evaluate the legitimacy of reported nuisances,” a press release by the city stated, “helping to prevent misuse of the system while ensuring that property owners are not discouraged from reporting criminal activity occurring on their premises.”

In the past year, police received 1,657 calls for resident’s alarms, 1,274 calls for general disturbances and nuisances, 78 calls for drag racing, and 16 for fireworks going off, all of which begin to spike in March and April, according to Cleveland’s Open Data Portal.

Before Monday, Cleveland’s legislative language was looser as far as how property owners were defined and punished when it came to issues like street racing, blaring sirens, or any type of drug offense, which the new laws cover for any “person associated with the property.”

If that person gets three-plus violations in less than six months, Public Safety Director Wayne Drummond will file a written notice their house is about to become a nuisance if a plan to resolve the related issues isn’t filed back.

Homeowners may be brought to Housing Court and even jailed, or have their properties condemned if those rowdy tenants or bothersome exhaust isn’t taken care of.