Posted on 09/01/2006 12:37:16 PM PDT by CZB
I'm a renter. Shoot me, OK. Or, if you can't do that, at the very least take away my 4th Amendment rights. Or, whatever is left of them.
In Baltimore County, Maryland, where I live, the county government has the right to come in and inspect my house as part of a "landord registration" law that includes a "rental unit inspection" process.
The inspection was shoved through the local duma (Baltimore County Council) by one Vincent Gardenia, D., former Sierra Club official it says on his bio. He might also boast that his is the office that hung up on me when I tried to get my rights back earlier today.
The local neighborhood (busybody) association lobbied Gardenia to enact this piece of Stalinist legislation--with a boost from the real estate interests and probably the Plumbers Relief Society, too, I bet. The law enables a group of inspectors (who I now like to think of as Gardenia's Gestapo) to "schedule" inspections of premises for safety and "live-ability."
OK. It's crass but a few months ago my landlord, who is a great guy and who does a great job, called and said he was coming with an inspector at X-hour on X-day. Fine.
The inspector spent an hour nosing around in a way that recalled one of the bit players on Hogan's Heroes examining the concentration camp barracks. He found a few safety violations that he said needed fixing, arguable stuff but OK. Then, as part of the live-ability jazz, he found a few things including "low water pressure" in the upstairs tub.
The inspector is one of those "drive-by" petty bureaucrats who doesn't have to endure the march of electricians and contractors who follow his officious hour on my premises. I'm the one who has to endure the hours of disruptions and intrusions related to the "fixing" of things that are not broken in the first place. But we put up with it.
Until now.
My landlord called and said he could only get the plumber Sat. morning at 8:30 a.m. to come in for the "water pressure." We have one bathroom here and they want to shut it down for several hours on the first morning of a three-day weekend, and on a day on which I have an appointment at 10 that I need to be shined and ready for. And all this to fix a non-existent problem that is supposed to impact my "live-ability" here.
So, I called Gardenia. We've lived here since 1999 and if this place wasn't livable we'd either have moved by now or be dead, I told him. Plus, you are violating the 4th Amendment, I told him.
No, he said, he wasn't. I had the right to decline the inspection, he said.
That could be true, of course, but this was the first I'd heard of it. His little Gestapo agent might have told me this before entering my premises a few months ago, but he didn't. Plus, who knew at that time that these people were going to intrude so deeply into my life that I would not be able to sleep regular hours on a Saturday morning as a result of their actions?
On the phone, I told Gardenia I'd had it with all this and that he needed to call my landlord and tell him not to send the plumber tomorrow. Gardenia said he wasn't "authorized" to do that. He passed the buc to the chief inspector but this guy said the computer was down and that the guy who really could do something, really maybe, was out until next Tuesday. I called Gardenia back, who is up for election this year, but his front lady told me he had "just left." I replied, "I bet he has," and she hung up on me.
Good for her. Instead of lying to me and saying my rights were still in tact she just slammed the phone down with Secret Police-like finality.
What I find precious about this is that Gardenia is among the same bunch who howl like stuck pigs over things like the NSA wiretapping program as a gross violation of the privacy rights of would-be terrorists dialing in from Baluchistan, but they just go ahead and ratify HOUSE INSPECTIONS of American citizens who have the audacity to rent rather than buy. So, they would not sacrifice the 4th Amendment to stop the next Mohammad Atta from dialing in unfettered from his mosque in Hamburg, but for more water pressure in my tub, well!!!, sayanara Constitution.
Incredibly, they will also cite all the "good" they are doing for tennants as they worm legislation like this into law, when the truth of the matter is that all the costs my otherwise conscientious landlord will incur will end up passed off to me, the renter, who pays first with his right to be left alone and last with his cash.
My wife doesn't want me making a stink about any of this, including even posting this. She's afraid that if Gardenia finds out we're complaining, he'll go ahead and quarter troops in our living room. But, hey. If we get the right troops, that might not be so bad.
Carolyn
IB4Z?
Maybe. I think the alleged 4th amendment violation is absurd, since this is not a government imposed search.
The assumption, as usual, is that the landlord is bad, and the tenant can't help themselves or do anything for themselves, so they need activist and paternal government to help them.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
C. S. Lewis
Did you mean "Whither the Fourth Amendment?", or was the irony intentional?
"Did you mean "Whither the Fourth Amendment?", or was the irony intentional?
"
I was going to ask the same question, but I like the irony so much that I refrained.
This isn't a 'Search and Seizure' issue.
This is an inspection of a rental property,which was agreed upon by the city and your landlord. It is perfectly legal so long as nothing that belongs to you is removed.
All rental housing must pass a city inspection to be able to get an 'occupancy' permit.
Inspection is required for a renewal of the permit.
You could 'just say no' to the inspectors,but you might find yourself out in the street looking for a new place to live if the city decides to deny the occupany permit to the owner.
IB4Z ?
I suppose for people in kalifornicate it is acceptable to be prodded like that by the govt?
It would be met by shotguns in most of the free southern states where we still believe in the Constitution.
Whither the ZOT?
Ah, yes. Life in the People's Republic. Ain't it grand?
Horse crap, it is too a government imposed search. Did you miss the part about a "Landlord registration law"?
-ccm
Then the time to do the inspection is when the apartment is in between tenants. A man's home is his castle, even if it's rented.
-ccm
LOL! Great nic!
(thanks for the Lewis quote)
As a 'landlord' myself I always write into the contract the right to inspect the premises with 24 hours notice. After all it is MY property and I have the right to make sure you are not destroying it. At the same time I can look for problems NOT caused by the tenant but that still may need 'fixin'.
-ccm
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