To the editor:
Owner-occupied residents in single-family zoned neighborhoods find little comfort that landlord Mark Lehman has "stopped paying attention" to how many students he can "cram" into his 60 rental houses (as though he ever did).
Mr. Lehman is typical of many student landlords who thumb their noses at the city ordinance, which limits the number of unrelated renters to three in single-family zoned neighborhoods.
Because of the city's "non-enforcement," and with no real penalty for ignoring the ordinance, landlords are saying, "catch me if you can"!
There is a solution to this single-family zoned neighborhood dilemma:
1. Register all renters AND their cars.
2. Reduce the number of unrelated renters (in SF zoned neighborhoods) to two.
3. Have a $1,000 per day fine for each violation.
Finally, if ineffectual enforcement of the single-family zoning ordinance (whose sole purpose is to protect property value and neighborhood "livability" of and for homeowners) continues to be ignored by the city, most central Lawrence families (and schools) will eventually disappear, having moved to nearby towns where housing is affordable and zoning is enforced.
Bob Blank,
Lawrence
Comments
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merrill (anonymous) says…
Mark Lehman is notorious.
craigers (anonymous) says…
This ordinance is rediculous. Like the relation of the tenants really has anything to do with how good of people/tenants they will be and how they will keep the place up. The problem is that people don't care about other people and their property anymore. It is getting worse for all rentals, no matter if you rent to a single person, family, or unrelated people. If they are going to trash the place and be unacceptable neighbors, then they will do it related or not.
Skeptic (anonymous) says…
I don't know Mark Lehman, but if he's thumbing his nose at this ordinance, I like him.
Jamesaust (anonymous) says…
Maybe we could just tattoo identification numbers on renters and force them to bed down at night in a camp constructed outside the city limits with barbed wire fences and guard dogs? Maybe we could force these second-class citizens to wear distinctive clothing so that the first-class citizens in our community can more easily identify with whom they are dealing? Perhaps even deport them ... to Guantanamo.
(Is the new letter policy one letter per person per week? Mr. Blank made his opinion clear just on July 26th. As newspaper editors, how do readers benefit from printing virtually identical letters spaced eight days apart? Or does slandering someone by name make this a "new" insight?)
The solutions remain as simple and as equitable as they've always been - set and enforce ordinances limiting behaviors from ALL residents that excessively annoy or endanger the health and welfare of others or that destroy the economic value of real property (codes for vehicles, trash, noise, etc.) It is of "little comfort" to find the slum next door is created by owners instead of renters.
merrill (anonymous) says…
I believe this ordinance surafced to deal with problem tenants. If renters are respectful of the neighbors why would there problems. We talk with new renters in order to cummunicate our concerns based on past situations. Thus far it's working. We all know folks like to party which is cool and groovy just so the party doesn't bother others. Like I said communicating early on seems to be working.