A new scheme pending before the Evanston City Council would establish a complex matrix of city regulation over buildings in town. It’s billed as an effort to reduce public safety and quality of life issues in several city neighborhoods.
Here’s a rundown key provisions of the plan contained in ordinances drafted by City Attorney Grant Farrar.
Nuisance premises
Two categories with similar enforcement mechanisms would be created by a new “neighborhood integrity ordinance” — a rewrite of the existing “nuisance premises” ordinance. They apply to any property, residential or commercial, owner-occupied or rented.
Your property could become:
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An aggravated nuisance premises if one of eight crimes — ranging from murder to unlawful contact with street gang members — were alleged to have occurred on the property, as long as there had been an arrest plus unspecified “underlying proof” of the activity.
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A nuisance premises if two or more of an array of lesser violations were alleged to have occurred there within a 12-month period. Those include failure to have a business license, overcrowding, property maintenance violations, conducting a prohibited home occupation, too many dogs, noise violations and drug possession. The ordinance language says an arrest plus “underlying proof” of the activity would be required.
You would be liable under the ordinance if you own, manage or control the property and “encourage or permit” such activity to occur.
You could be cited for violating the ordinance without warning, although the city could opt to give you a warning notice and time to make corrections.
Hearings regarding violations would be held by the city’s administrative adjudication division or in district court in Skokie.
A judge could order you to make improvements to the property including adding security lighting, hiring security personnel or carrying out eviction proceedings against tenants engaged in illegal activity.
The city could also recover from you the cost of its enforcement activities at a rate of $100 per hour per city employee involved plus a $750 administrative fee.
Rental licensing
A new “rental licensing” ordinance would replace the city’s existing “rental registration” ordinance and would create two more categories of regulation. These rules apply only residential landlords.
Your property would become:
- A tier one property if it met all city licensing requirements.
- A tier two property if it didn’t.
Your property’s inspection and service call history and “other equally-applied rational criteria” would be used to decide which tier your property ended up in. City officials have estimated that 10 to 15 percent of rental properties would likely end up in the tier two class.
Your tier one property would be inspected once every four years and you’d pay annual license fees that would range from $20 for a single-family home to $500 for a building with more than 100 units.
Your tier two property would be inspected every year and you’d pay annual license fees ranging from $100 to $2,500. You’d also have to attend a “neighborhood integrity and community responsiveness” training course, complete a police department security assessement and carry out its recommended improvements.
Your license could be suspended by the city manager without warning for a variety of violations and you would be barred from accepting new tenants during the suspension. You’d have five days to request a hearing to challenge the suspension.
Your suspended license could be revoked by the city manager if you failed to fix property standards violations. You’d have five days to request a hearing to challenge the revocation.
If you rented, or sought to rent a property and didn’t have a license, you could be subject to fines of up to $375 per day.
Owner-occupied homes
No change here — unless you have the misfortune to become a “nuisance premises.” Other than that, owner-occupied single family homes would continue to be inspected only on a complaint-driven basis,. As a practical matter, that means most existing single-family homes are never inspected by the city, unless they undergo remodeling.