Who is minding the store? Concord Landlords ignore the law.

Concord's city council Resolution No. 12-50 was approved recently, the punitive steps of referring deadbeat landlords to collections by tax levy is a long time coming and can be counted in the win column for tenants, barely.

That a city acts to collect money owed them is not news, the fact that it has taken literally years to collect, is troubling to say the least.

The multi-family inspection program is a great idea on paper; Having a code enforcement agent visit annually is supposed to keep landlords that run big apartment complexes on their toes. The theory being that most people like to avoid paying unnecessary fees therefore they would keep the property up to code since it provides them income, this would insure tenants decent units to occupy.

In reality, code enforcement is overwhelmed with thousands of units under the responsibility of only one agent.  Notices of violation and administrative citation pile up and nothing happens; Such is the contempt absentee landlords have for our city that thousands of dollars remain unpaid for years even after receiving invoices and notices from the city, it seems like no one can hold them accountable.

This action by the city is one small step in the right direction, we urge our elected officials to enforce the laws in the books; these call for misdemeanor charges for scofflaws on top of the monetary fines.

 If we send a few of these slumlords to jail for a few weeks as an example of what happens when you ignore your responsibility, it could make the difference between being Concord being known as a great city or bedbug city.