Local News
CITY HOUSING COURT: Distant landlords hit with big fines
Fines exceeding $10,000 were imposed on two errant property owners recently in city court.
In one case, the Chicago-based owner of a vacant single-family home on Spalding Street was fined $11,000 for her failure to correct 22 building code violations. Neshell McGriff was tried in absentia Jan. 28 by Judge Thomas DiMillo, was found guilty of all counts and was fined $500 per violation.
In the other case, Deutsche Bank faces a $12,000 fine after failing to address 12 violations on a foreclosed Locust Street apartment house. DiMillo levied a judgment Jan. 21, after hearing the corporation had not responded to any of the city’s multiple summonses over a period of months. Corporations cannot be tried, but they can be ordered to pay damages for wrongdoing.
Prosecutor Matthew Brooks hopes stiff penalties motivate a couple of distant landlords to finally take care of their local business, he said Thursday.
“Sometimes the only way to get their attention is by hitting them with a big fine,” he said. “Then they realize we’re not quitting.”
McGriff, the owner of 166 Spalding St., appeared in court one time during proceedings dating back to September 2009. Most other times, Brooks said, her brother, a local resident, came in her place. Some repair work was done at the house, Brooks said, but the violation that building inspection judged most serious, a structurally unsound front porch, was not tended to. DiMillo set a trial date last month after McGriff didn’t produce proof she’d hired a contractor to take care of it. Neither McGriff nor her brother attended the trial.
“Although some work was being done, we went for the higher fine because (McGriff’s) repeated promises were never lived up to,” Brooks said. “If the violations (remain), building inspection can cite them anew and we’ll do this all over again.”
The city contacted Deutsche Bank about problems at 263 Locust St., a vacant three-unit apartment house, after first citing the prior owner and learning the bank had him evicted from the premises. Deutsche Bank started a foreclosure proceeding in April 2009 but has not completed it, Brooks said. Meanwhile, problems including broken-out windows and trash in the yard are unabated.
Attaching property liability to banks is “complicated,” especially in light of mortgage trading and selling, Brooks said. Deutsche Bank was not the lender at 263 Locust, it’s the trustee of a mortgage pool created several years ago. State law allows the city to regard Deutsche as the owner, anyway, but the international bank’s only response to summonses has been to demand “proof” of its interest in the property. Brooks mailed a copy of Deutsche’s foreclosure initiation paperwork and hasn’t heard back from the bank since.
Brooks thinks a $12,000 bill from City Court might get a response. If the fine isn’t paid by Feb. 25, he said, it’ll be converted to a lien on 263 Locust. Deutsche will know that when it moves to sell the house, it can’t close the deal until the lien is paid off.
“In similar cases, once they get word (of penalties) the bank will call and deal with us,” Brooks said. “It hasn’t happened in this case, yet, but ... .”
In the first half of 2009, DiMillo levied fines exceeding $10,000 in three housing cases involving distant owners. Two were converted to liens that remain unsatisfied today, according to city court records. One is an $11,250 lien on 228 Ontario St., owned by Countrywide Home Loans; the other is a $12,000 lien on 177 N. Transit St., a rental property held by a Pennsylvania-based limited liability company.
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