It’s a mellow morning accented by espresso, kippers and a multi-disc listening of the “Complete Stax/Volt Singles, 1959-1968,” and I’m hesitant to dive back into the rancor sure to be engendered by the topic of tax relief for rental property owners.However, to judge by curent readership, I'm on a roll, so what the hell.
Yesterday in a private e-mail, a longtime NAC reader expressed annoyance with the apparent emergence of yet another campaign to improve the desperate plight of starving rental property owners, whose dented and soiled tin cups are expected to become a recurring feature of local editorial pages:
This is a joke!
Indiana landlords to make plea for tax relief (Courier-Journal).
I think this needs a spot on your blog, and there should be a group called, “Citizens against the Slumlords.” Everyone needs to call Indianapolis and request that their representatives vote NO on tax breaks to slumlords until they bring their properties up to code. These are businesses and should be taxed as such! These are problems and eyesores that I’m very passionate about …
After reading this note, I composed an e-mail to Pat Harrison:
Greetings,
I'm the senior editor of the NA Confidential blog, and we share your concern with certain problems associated with rental property in New Albany and Floyd County, although our emphasis as long suffering residents -- i.e., single family homeowners – in New Albany's long neglected historic core centers on the absence of applicable code enforcement and the proliferation of "slumlords."
Having viewed your recent advocacy on behalf of rental property ownership, and likewise perusing statistics suggesting that a high rate of rentals runs hand in hand with overall societal decay, we'd like to ask you a couple of questions.
Now many rental units do you currently own?
Do you hold mortgages on these?
Do you support the enforcement of applicable codes for all citizens?
Thanks for helping us understand your side of this question. Rest assured that we will continue to publicly advocate meaningful codes and rental property inspections as a means of alleviating the problems that have been experienced with irresponsible rental property management, irrespective of the tax burden -- which is but one side of the coin.
Twenty-four hours later, we’ve not received a response, but the situation is being monitored.
Alms, anyone?
Sign me up for any and all advocacy groups that could offset the "slumlord union".
ReplyDeleteIf they get thier tax breaks, do the persons who live next to the run down shoddy shanties get breaks as well due to depreciation of our properties values due to thier neglegence?
These are businesses and should be taxed as such!
ReplyDeleteThat's a very good point that's being lost in the furor. It's more than a little ironic that the landlords are asking the legislature to do exactly what they say they are against: encouraging one form of *business* investment over the other.
If rental properties are awarded different tax status, that status should be comparable to grocery stores, gas stations, and widget factories, not people's homes. They should also be required to maintain the same business standards: licensing, inspections, liability insurance, etc.
With the comments that some of these landlords make, they need to go out of business.
ReplyDeleteWhen I read comments similar to those recently printed and think back to a whopper that still has me seeing red, there is little sympathy.
A few years ago, it came out in the Tribune that Mr. Nash had some property with delinquent taxes. His basic response was, that property was not generating sufficient income to pay the taxes. Even though he had money from other sources to pay the taxes, he preferred that each property "pay it's own way". I believe he was still the Democratic country chairman at the time. With reasoning like that, no wonder the politics in this area stink to high heaven.
bluegill, you are 100% correct. Rental business is NOT (as the newspaper put it) an opportunity to sit back and collect a check.
ReplyDeleteThis is a joke.
Although, grudgingly and in fairness, the newspaper article's inelegant reference to "American dream" was likely the invention of the reporter, Chris Morris (if memory serves). They were his words in the opening paragraph.
ReplyDeleteNot that it will stop me from quoting it ...
I went back and checked. It was Chris Morris writing about "collecting the check".
ReplyDeleteWhether accurate or not, the "American Dream" part is attributed to Pat Harrison.
I have fought a long hard battle against the slumlords on my street and we have finally been able to raise the flag of victory, two have flipped and sold the houses, two more are up for sale out of the price range of "slumlords".
ReplyDeleteIn the process, the remaining rental property holders on the street who do the job right have been able to "sit back" and collect higher rent for the houses being on a more desirable street. (one I know of went $75 higher on rent and it was only on the market for a week before it was taken by a rather nice family).
One block down you cross the line into the gregory's holdings, and the trash is there, the loose mad dogs, the junked cars, the 10 or 15 people squating in a 1000 sq. foot home, the loud thumping bass in the cars, borderline neglected children running in the middle of the street in diapers.
It took bitching my head off for 3 years, hundreds of letter, certified and otherwise, countless phone calls and face to face meetings downtown, and the threat of a couple of civil lawsuits to crack the armor that was the slumlord union on our block. In all truth, it damn near killed me, and at one point we were ready to sell our house and leave taking a substantial loss.
The ones who run the slums will find no sympathy or cease fire from me or mine, the rental property owners who do what needs to be done, keeps up on the property and the tenants will get nothing but my praise and support, along with a thank you each and everytime the chance presents itself.
Thanks IAH.
ReplyDeletedon't we see the effects of that good ole boy "sit back and collect the checks" mentality of slumlording all around us. I do plan to write our reps in Indy and register my strong objection to further perverting the property tax codes by offering tax breaks to slumlords. What a crime that would be.
ReplyDelete