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City line on blight justified

Those Altoona rental-property owners who feel that the city shouldn’t have the right to impose insurance requirements for their units have a legal recourse. They can challenge the requirement in court.

But without such a challenge putting the requirement on hold, the city is correct in acting to force compliance.

If the city doesn’t intend to enforce an ordinance, it shouldn’t have it on its books.

That applies to any issue.

Regarding insurance for rental properties, the city’s Department of Codes and Inspections is in the process of revoking rental licenses of approximately 160 landlords who haven’t complied with a requirement added in February stipulating that rental-property owners must obtain fire and liability insurance for their properties.

According to a front-page article in Tuesday’s Mirror, the city notified landlords in mid-June that they would need the coverage by the end of July. However, because the insurance requirement is new, the city was courteous in giving landlords twice the usual 30-day grace period.

Now that the extension has ended, the city has begun cracking down on those who have ignored the new requirement, which emanated from a suggestion from the city’s Blight Task Force.

The thinking behind the new requirement was and is logical: Insurance companies, to reduce their risk, would insist on improvements. That would translate into an upgrade of the city’s housing stock.

At the time Tuesday’s article was written, the 160 rental-property owners in question hadn’t bought the required insurance policies for approximately 200 properties.

Those 200 or so properties comprise about 350 living units, according to city Codes Director Rebecca Brown.

According to Brown, there are approximately 5,000 licensed rental properties comprising 8,800 units overall in Altoona.

The 200 properties in question (350 units) shouldn’t have the right to non-compliance — and possibly soiling the city’s landscape — when most landlords are complying, presumably understanding the importance to the city of having a well-maintained rental-property stock.

Not having deteriorated rental housing nearby can provide the incentive for owners of private homes to attack their own property deterioration that might be evolving. Some non-rental property owners balk at spending money for repairs when their neighborhood is “going downhill.”

Rental-property deterioration isn’t just an Altoona issue; most metropolitan areas have it. The point is that Altoona finally is taking an aggressive stance against it, which no doubt other communities will be watching — especially if any court challenges emerge.

People with the city’s best interests in mind hope that there will be no challenges to the new requirement.

Those whose licenses will be revoked will be causing themselves additional headaches; they won’t be permitted to have new tenants and, to have their licenses reinstated, those landlords not only will need to provide proof of insurance, but also will be hit with a financial penalty.

Additionally, the landlords with revoked licenses will have to pay their regular rental fees and submit tenant lists to the city, as usual, because the city didn’t accept those from landlords who were out of compliance on July 31.

Again, landlords who object have legal recourse through the courts, but that option might be more costly than simply buying the required insurance and building that cost into their rental charges.

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