City should not assist negligent landlords

Regarding the apparently uninhabitable housing at Summerset Village Apartments: Mark Standriff, the city of Fresno’s spokesman, is quoted as saying, “One way or another we’re going to fix the problem.”

While the landlord lives anonymously in Santa Barbara and collects the millions of dollars of rents on the 220 units, city of Fresno crews, on the taxpayer’s dime, are testing natural-gas piping on the owner’s private property.

When did city taxpayers become responsible for supporting absentee landlords in the repair of neglected and decaying infrastructure on private rental property?

Fresno’s code enforcement division should enforce the code, period.

This property is only the tip of the iceberg in a city with an unacceptably high level of substandard housing and abandoned buildings. Sadly, instead of sending the message that our city will not tolerate uninhabitable housing, it seems we’re encouraging it by sending Fresno city crews to provide assistance to a negligent landlord when the tenants have finally had enough.

This story was originally published November 28, 2015 at 7:35 AM with the headline "City should not assist negligent landlords."