Pubdate: Mon, 24 Sep 2001
Source: Daily Reflector (NC)
Copyright: 2001 Daily Reflector
Contact:  http://www.reflector.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1456
Author: T. Scott Batchelor, The Daily Reflector

DRUG ACTIVITY AT RENTAL HOUSE PROMPTS CITY COUNCIL TO PUT LANDLORD ON NOTICE

For the first time, the Greenville City Council has voted to exercise 
authority provided by the state Legislature to force a landlord to curb 
drug activity at one of his properties.

In 1995, the Legislature gave municipalities the ability to ask for court 
action against landowners who maintain property for drug-related activity, 
or who fail to prevent that activity. Council members voted unanimously on 
Sept. 13 to instruct city attorneys to initiate that legal process.

At the center of the action is a rental house at 1402 Chestnut St., where 
city officials say they have asked the property owner, James Baldwin, to 
evict tenant James Matthews.

Matthews has been involved in two of the seven drug arrests at the house in 
the past two years, police say. Baldwin has not moved to evict Matthews or 
to run background checks on prospective tenants, both of which he agreed in 
July to do.

"It appears Mr. Baldwin is making no effort to stop the drug activity on 
his property," Police Chief Joe Simonowich wrote in a memorandum to City 
Manager Marvin Davis. "This property is a nuisance to the neighborhood and 
an immediate threat to the public safety of the area."

Police attorney Blair Carr said she will file an action in Pitt County 
Superior Court asking a judge to enjoin Baldwin from allowing any further 
drug-related activity on the premises.

If he refuses to make a good-faith effort in that regard, he can be found 
in contempt of court and subjected to fines, including the cost of the 
city's efforts to deal with him, Carr said.

The court can force Baldwin to evict the tenant, or, ultimately, seize the 
house, she said.

"This guy's got a loaded gun, and he refuses to disarm it," she said of 
Baldwin.

Carr stresses that the city has worked with Baldwin - as it has, 
successfully, with other landlords - to find ways to eliminate the criminal 
behavior, including help evicting the tenant.

"I give them tools that they can use to help," but Baldwin hasn't met the 
city even halfway, she said.

"That's not the kind of landlord we need," Carr said.

Though forfeiture of the house is the ultimate remedy, "the city does not 
want to take any landowner's property," she said.

Through the court action, officials "are putting the landowners on notice 
that you must be good stewards of the property," Carr said.
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