Augusta commissioners may take a tour of properties owned by “slumlords” with an eye toward improving tenant conditions.
Commissioner Jordan Johnson, who represents the Harrisburg, East Augusta, Sand Hills and Laney-Walker areas, said he gets calls about the conditions of houses both in and out of District 1.
Homes lacking water and sewer and severe infestation plague tenants and their neighbors alike, he said.
Johnson said he observed rat and roach infestation at one Harrisburg house so bad it spilled over to an adjacent restaurant.
“A rat actually left the home and shot across to (the owner’s) business,” Johnson said.
But absentee landlords, even as close as North Augusta, can be hard to reach, he said.
“I want to have a real conversation about absentee landlords and about slumlords.” He suggested commissioners tour the areas, “to actually see how bad folks are living in parts of our county.”
Remedies are limited under existing laws, Codes Enforcement Manager Bradley Benjamin told commissioners Monday. Codes Enforcement can cite owners for codes violations, if it can get them to court.
“We can hold them accountable through serving citations. The hurdle we fall into is the absentee landlords that don’t live locally,” he said.
Commissioner Stacy Pulliam said state law changes are needed and hoped area legislators could make them.
The city hasn’t called out rental properties other than apartment complexes in many years. In 2010, an effort to create a chronic nuisance properties ordinance, to address chronically problem properties, was shelved after lawyers and law enforcement warned about state protections for property owners.
“An ordinance can be created, but what it can consist of is the limitation,” General Counsel Wayne Brown said Monday. “When a state addresses an area, political subdivisions cannot regulate that area.”
Johnson suggested Augusta look to Cook County, Ill., for insight. The Chicago county’s residential tenant-landlord ordinance bans lockout policies and requires landlords to provide essential services such as heat, hot water and plumbing, and keep premises free from bedbugs and in compliance with local building codes.
Tenants, in return, must dispose of their garbage, refrain from damaging property and grant the landlord reasonable access to make repairs.
Commissioner Sean Frantom’s motion to conduct a tour of problem areas in the next 60 days got a vote of support from the Public Services committee and moves to the full commission for approval.
Poll fails to show Cinco de Mayo preferred for bar opening
Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 11, remains the Sunday Augusta bars can be open after the commission took no action Monday to undo an earlier vote.
Frantom had pushed to replace Super Bowl Sunday with Cinco de Mayo after bar owners complained about having to be closed on New Year’s Eve 2023.
Augusta’s Sunday Sales ordinance allows only a single Sunday per year that bars can remain open, according to the referendum approved by voters several years ago.
When the commission approved Super Bowl Sunday 2023 as the open Sunday last year, few realized it would preclude bars from being open New Year’s Eve.
But a survey conducted by city staff found only two of 61 bar owners surveyed favoring Cinco de Mayo, which lands on Sunday, May 5, this year, as the open Sunday.
Only 15 bars responded, with 46% favoring St. Patrick’s Day, which also falls on Sunday this year, and 40% preferring to keep Super Bowl Sunday.
The commission received the survey as information and vowed to give it additional study.
“We need to get in front of these bar owners somehow,” Johnson said.
Susan McCord is a staff writer with The Augusta Press. Reach her at susan@theaugustapress.com
