The city is cracking down on absentee landlords. Will it work?

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

NEW BEDFORD — George Ostler crept down Jouvette Street in a black SUV. He looked left, he looked right, and then he spotted the pile of sticks. He stopped the car.

The large brush pile was in the driveway of a run-down, boarded-up triple-decker, surrounded by scattered litter. It hadn’t moved since the last time Ostler drove down Jouvette Street a few weeks earlier.

Ostler, the head of New Bedford’s Code Enforcement Division, was making his Friday morning rounds. White paint was peeling off the building. Weeds sprouted from the driveway. Since 2019, the city has cited this long-vacant property’s owner for more than 100 code violations — including a previous ticket for that pile of sticks. Ostler decided he would add one more.

“It’s unsightly,” he said as he wrote up the ticket. “It’s unkempt.”

As he continued his rounds, Ostler wondered why a landlord would leave a property abandoned for years like that, especially after so many tickets. He didn’t get it. One code violation is understandable, he said, but any more than that is too many.

“When you start hitting 10, that’s just neglect,” he said. “You don’t care about your neighbors; you don’t care about your neighborhood.”

By Ostler’s definition, neglect is common in New Bedford: More than 500 properties have received at least 10 code violations in the last five years, city data shows. Dozens of properties have racked up more than 50 violations in that time.

Later that morning, Ostler drove past 901 Brock Ave., another one of the city’s most neglected properties. This South End triple-decker has been vacant and boarded up since at least 2019. In that time, it has racked up 67 code violations, including 19 tickets last year for unmaintained property. Inspection staff spotted overgrown weeds, piles of trash, and dirty, broken furniture in the driveway during recent visits.

That’s how the properties with the most violations often look. City employees’ photos of them show overgrown bushes crowding the sidewalk and trash overflowing from bins. Little pieces of litter are everywhere. A dresser sits on its side in a puddle. Dirty mattresses accompany piles of junk. The photos show a mix of residential properties, empty buildings, and vacant lots.

---

Top 12 property code violators in New Bedford

---

The current system isn’t working, city officials say. Inspectors cite the same properties again and again, but the landlords don’t change their habits.

Mayor Jon Mitchell’s solution: Raise the fines for repeat code violators.

The current fee structure starts with a warning, then the fees for each offense rise in $25 increments until they hit the maximum fine of $300 — on the 25th offense. Mitchell wants to increase the increments so it only takes seven violations to reach the $300 maximum.

The violation tally will reset to zero after one year with no new violations, a provision that allows landlords to start over after they make a genuine effort at compliance.

This is how the city will hold “absentee landlords” accountable, Mitchell said when he announced the proposal in his inaugural address this year.

“There aren’t many of them, but they are all too willing to pay minor fines as a cost of doing business,” he said.

Actually, many of the top code violators aren’t even doing that. They have ignored most of the fines they have received, according to city records reviewed by The Light. It’s unclear what difference higher fines will make for property owners who already have tens of thousands of dollars in outstanding fines and continue to let their properties deteriorate.

The top 12 nuisance properties in the city have racked up a total of over $200,000 in fines over the last five years, the records show. Yet their owners have paid less than $33,000 of that amount. Most of the landlords on the list haven’t paid more than a small fraction of their fines, and half have paid nothing at all.

The Woodbridge Estates condominium complex in the North End received 245 tickets in the last five years, including its 115th offense for an overflowing dumpster and its 52nd offense for unmaintained property. Inspectors spotted litter and discarded furniture around the dumpsters throughout the last year. The complex’s violations have led to more than $62,000 in fines. That entire amount is still outstanding.

The owner of a parking lot on Mitchell Street owes the city $43,050. The property has received 155 tickets since 2019, including one for its 152nd offense of “unmaintained property”: Inspectors targeted the property last year for litter and weeds along its chain-link fence.

The records do not show any fines still outstanding for violations before 2019.

Most of the fines have gone unpaid for long enough that city officials have put liens on the properties, meaning that the city can forcibly take the money it’s owed when the owner sells the property. The city could force a sale by foreclosing on the lien, but it’s an expensive process that can take years.

In the meantime, the tickets keep piling up.

Making the fines enforceable

Experts on code enforcement doubt that a fee increase alone will get landlords to change their behavior.

“If they’re not paying now, why would they pay something more?” said Dan O’Brien, an urban scientist at Northeastern University who has studied problem properties in Boston. “I think the only thing that matters to them is if there’s teeth to it.”

Increasing the fines is a “step in the right direction,” he said. He likened the current fee schedule to a gnat buzzing in the landlord’s ear. But New Bedford can only raise its fines so much — a state law prevents the city from charging any more than $300 per offense.

“Sticking to the current fee schedule setup, I’m not sure you would reasonably get to a cost that would matter to absentee landlords and deter them,” O’Brien said.

Karen Black, another expert on code enforcement, agreed. Black is an urban studies professor at the University of Pennsylvania and principal at May 8 Consulting, where she works with local governments around the country to address problem properties.

“Just putting higher fees on the books, and not having a series of both incentives and penalties for failing to pay them, doesn’t really do any good,” she said.

Black suggested that New Bedford consider adopting policies to make the higher fines more enforceable. They could include revoking landlords’ licenses to rent to tenants, barring them from buying properties in tax foreclosure, and not allowing them to file cases in housing court if they have active code violations.

“That gets the owner’s attention,” she said, “because they want to evict a bad tenant, and the court says, ‘I’m so sorry, but I can’t help you until you pay these charges.’” 

Getting their attention

How will increasing fines make a difference for landlords who are already comfortable ignoring tens of thousands of dollars in liens?

“That’s a good question,” Ostler said. “Yeah, I mean how that will impact, time will tell. I think —”

City spokesperson Jon Darling jumped in at that point. He was sitting in on the interview at the Code Enforcement Division’s headquarters after Ostler’s morning rounds.

“You’re still upping the amount they will eventually have to pay,” Darling said. “Eventually, they’re going to sell it at some point, and we will be made whole on those, and they’re going to have to pay more than they would before.”

In other words, when the property eventually sells, a higher amount of the proceeds will go into the city’s pocket, rather than the landlord’s.

As for deterring landlords from violating the code in the first place, Ostler thinks the new policy will work for some landlords, though “maybe not all.” He listed off some property owners he thought were making an effort lately.

Ultimately, the city can’t do much more than raise the fines, said Jennifer Vieira, director of the Department of Facilities and Fleet Management, which oversees code enforcement.

“We’re feeling like we have to try to make something that’s going to get their attention,” she said. 

Officials also pointed to challenges they face in housing court: property owners can appeal their fines in court, which gives them more time and can result in judges reducing the fine.

“We’ve made tremendous progress in holding unscrupulous landlords accountable for failing to manage their properties as they would their own homes, but a handful still have not come around,” Mayor Mitchell said in a written statement. “To get them to play by the rules, the most frequent offenders must be subject to higher penalties, and we need the courts to uphold them.”

Ostler’s goal

Ostler works the equivalent of six days a week, he said — his work day starts at 5:45 a.m. and doesn’t end until 6 or 7 p.m. on days when he has court hearings. Making do with his department’s resources has been a challenge. But he has seen improvement at some properties since he started with the division two years ago, a feat he attributes to his dedicated staff.

“My goal, if it’s ever achievable, is to have a time where there never is a violation,” Ostler said.

Will that day ever come? He sighed.

“Fingers crossed,” he said. “I don’t think so.”

---