Sheesh! Looks like it would be easier, quicker, and cheaper if Mr. Wallner just drove out and fixed it himself!
Amendment IV, according to Montreat, NC:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, does not exist, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon the petition of five nosy busy-bodies, supported by suspicion or any other reason or even no reason at all, and particularly describing the shakedown we'll give you, and the person's whose rights are to be egregiously violated."
Seriously, this is no less than I would expect from a communist country. How sad.
This is ridiculous. An "administrative search warrant" is nothing more than a piece of paper. Search warrants are issued by judges upon a demonstration of probably cause by the requesting agency (police or otherwise). The judge performs a critical, constitutional gatekeeping function.
I'm thinking of moving to New Hampshire, where things are still a bit like they used to be. Maine, strangely enough, is dominated by the liberals that have flooded into the southern part of the state, although government is often ignored in the more rural areas DownEast.
Why do you have to heat hot water?
You got it.
I don't know why people feel they have this right to make money on an investment. You see it everywhere from Enron all the way down to home ownership.
People invest money and make a profit, that's great! If they invest money and lose it? Well, then it's someone elses fault.
IMO your right to do what you want with regard to the appearance of your home trumps this fake "right" your neighbors have to make a profit on their investment.
Otherwise, you have situations like this where towns are grabbing land under immenient domain to build shopping malls and homeowners associations have to approve the color of your house.
It get's ridiculous and as long as it's not their ox being gored and they stand to profit, don't expect your neighbors to say a word in opposition.
That means no plastic water pipe, etc. There goes the cost of construction.
What about paint? It's not a natural material.........
Which one of the five neighbors wants to try and come in first?
They would snoop around my home over my dead body. I mean that in the most literal sense.
10:12 pm PT, Sunday, Jul 21, 2002
Blight-buster or right-wronger?
By Edith Alderette
Staff writer
VALLEJO - Not all rentals are the same in Vallejo. Some are spacious homes with every modern amenity imaginable. Others are small, squalid and, in many cases, in violation of public health or building codes.
The latter and their effect on neighborhood blight has prompted the city to look into writing a new law requiring landlords of rental property to open their apartments and condominiums up to code-enforcement officers for inspection.
The proposed "Vallejo Rental Property Program" has health-care groups and neighborhood associations cheering that poorly maintained, substandard rental housing may finally be hunted down by the city and either fixed or removed from the market.
But landlords say the fees the city would charge constitute a unfair tax they would have to pass on to tenants through increased rents.
Renters in cities where such laws have been implemented say they also resent being forced to let the government go through their cupboards just because they don't own their homes.
The new law, brought before the Vallejo City Council in July 2001, met with sound support of numerous groups, including the Sutter Street Neighborhood Association, Kaiser Permanente Napa-Solano and Solano Coalition for Better Health.
However, before any vote was taken, City Attorney Fred Soley put the ordinance on hold to clear up questions about whether council members who are landlords may vote. Soley says the law could be come back to the council as early as September.
Under the ordinance, rental properties throughout the city would be inspected on a regular basis to make sure conditions are up to city standards and to ensure that tenants are maintaining them safely and properly. Advocates involved in the law's development say they hope to eventually check out every apartment in the city. "Over a couple or four years, maybe more, each piece of rental property would receive an inspection," said Michael Sparks of Fighting Back Partnership, a nonprofit Vallejo organization that helped develop the proposed ordinance.
The city, Sparks said, would begin by inspecting units in buildings notorious for squalor. After giving the landlord notice, code-enforcement officers would then be allowed to enter units to check for evidence of code violations, like non-functioning smoke detectors, mildew and rot, vermin, broken appliances, poor lighting and blocked fire escapes.
Any violations would have to be repaired immediately or the landlord would be required to remove the unit from the market and find other living arrangements for tenants.
When inspectors come to bottom of the list, they would begin again at the top. Sparks said an apartment building that has no code problems would be inspected about every four years, while those buildings with problems would be seen again by officers every two to three years after they were fixed.
Law enforcement officials eagerly greet the prospect of a rental-inspection law, noting that poor housing correlates directly with crime rates in neighborhoods throughout the city. "Basically, what we find is a high level of blight and criminal activity go hand in hand with run-down properties in some of the more dilapidated areas," said Sgt. Larry Jiles of the Vallejo Police Department.
As a member of the central substation's Beat Health Program, he says his officers regularly discover abysmal living conditions in many of Vallejo's depressed neighborhoods, and the new law would give those tenants a way to get their apartments upgraded without having to face repercussions from an angry landlord.
"We go into many rental units that have broken windows in disrepair, where they can't be open or closed, where the floors are deteriorated, where there's a high degree of mold. There are holes in the bathroom floors from toilets or sinks that have torn away from the walls or the floor. Some don't have heaters that operate," he said. "People shouldn't have to live that way."
Objections to the law
Others, however, are not so enthusiastic.
The state's largest landlord association says the fees that landlords would be charged to maintain the program are an unfair and dig into their slim profits, and that an increase in costs to rent a property will only result in higher rents.
Landlords would be required to pay an annual inspection fee of $50 to $75 to keep their units on the market, Sparks said. The cash could be used to hire more officers to inspect properties.
In other cities where such laws have been implemented, like Concord, Daly City, Oakland and San Rafael, the fee is assessed annually, even though the inspections only happen once every several years. Costs range from $17 to $70 a year.
Theresa Karr, regional government relations director for Vallejo-based California Apartment Association, the state's largest trade and lobbying association for landlords and property managers, says her members resent having to pay annually for problems they don't cause.
"It's like Big Brother's in your pocket again," she said. "In Concord, what [property owners] resent most is the fee. From them, it's, 'Get the bad guy, but I have 300 units here. Why do I have to pay a fee for each of my units because the city's trying to get that slumlord over there?' They really think there should be another way."
Others aren't cheering the new law either and worry it would effectively make a different set of constitutional rights for homeowners and renters. Owners would receive the Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches, while renters would be forced to let city officials enter their homes.
"This housing inspection thing is a Trojan horse for two reasons: It's a way to abuse poor people and it's a way to make money by taxing everybody," said Vallejo attorney Dan Healy.
With such a law, Healy said, a city can force landlords to open units, even if a renter objects. If a property owner or a tenant refuses to allow officers entry, an inspection warrant -- similar to a search warrant -- would be signed by a judge to allow the code-enforcement officers entry.
Unlike search warrants, however, inspection warrants are much easier to get. While obtaining a search warrant requires the city to go through a long process of developing proof that something illegal is going on inside the unit and presenting a compelling argument to a judge, all officers need for an inspection warrant is to explain they have not been allowed entry and the rental-inspection ordinance mandates that they have the right to enter.
"It's a nice way to get them in to conduct searches without probable cause," Healy said.< snip >
Evidently enforcing existing laws doesn't occur to these people--not when the power to march into private homes is so tempting. After all they are from the government and are here to help, right? ARRGGGH
You could call the electrical utility to have your meter re-installed, but they won’t do it without a sign off from the electrical inspector. So you either cooperate willingly or unwillingly, but cooperate is what you will do…
I understand the Fire Chief had similar powers… I don’t know what he could shut down if you refuse to cooperate though.