Trash Talk
“Students get trash tickets,” reports the News. Quoted in this article are: an employee of a church that’s next to a fraternity, an executive director of a fraternity’s national organization, a landlord, a police lieutenant and Mayor Hieftje. As is sometimes the case with these kinds of stories, we have a nagging feeling that talking to a member of some other group — perhaps the one named in the headline — would have made for more complete coverage.
The reporter does, however, deserve kudos for at least trying to investigate the landlord’s claim that city trash enforcers “are really aggressive. They will come Saturday at 8 a.m. and write you a ticket while you guys are sleeping.” Not surprisingly, “the city would not allow The News to review the tickets to see the times and dates they were written.”
CORRECTION: The reporter, Tom Gantert, did in fact try to talk to the members of one of the fraternities accused of trash violations.
Last year my house got ticketed on December 26th for a littering violation. I left for the holidays on the 22nd and returned on the 27th to find the ticket. The garbage in question? Five or six copies of the New York Times piled at the bottom of the steps to out front porch. The ticket was kind of substantial and then our honorable landlord Zaki Alawi tacked on about another hundred bucks of “administrative expenses.”
The same officer also ticketed cars that were parked in our driveway for being “on the grass.” even though it had just snowed and the line between the grass and the driveway was invisible. And of course, the cars were completely on the driveway, not even the bumper was hanging over. At least that time we got the tickets dropped because we were able to take pictures.
God bless the AAPD.
posted by Zach on January 24th, 2008 at 3:45 pm eZach, your example is pretty chickenxxxx (wasn’t sure, can ya type chickenshit? Guess we’ll see..) on the part of the city I’ll grant you but none of you can deny that the streets around campus are a mess. Go south on State on Monday morning when the weather is fine and school is in session and tell me you would want to live next to that mess or have to see it. Hell, even as a student I had more respect for where I lived than the crud I see around campus. Have your fun kids, drink up and pee in the alleyway for all I care (as long as my kids can’t see it) but pick up your plastic cups and put away the beer pong table when you’re done - not a lot to ask. If it takes a fine to teach you rascally kids some common decency then so be it. But again Zach, your example shows the problem with having to look to government to enforce common decency, they overstep like a mutha.
posted by Thomas Cook on January 24th, 2008 at 5:57 pm eI’m sure I’m going to get mocked by MG again, but it’s a two way street. If the city lets slumlords provide trashy homes, then residents can expect students not to show too much concern about cleaning up their yards.
Zach sorry to hear you are getting to deal with the joys of Zaki Alawi as your landlord. He bought the house I was living in part way through a lease. The garage door broke in November and every conversation I had with the man included a request for the door being repaired. When he tried to get my housemates to end our lease early in May, he said he was shocked that I cared about the garage door functioning.
Of course he wanted us out of the house so he could divide it up some more over the summer. He didn’t add any parking area for the additional cars that future tenants would own and wasn’t going to let them use the garage either. Let’s see you increase the number of cars a house is going to have at the same time you reduce the number of spots for cars. That’s a great plan for more cars parking on the streets, further into areas that traditionally aren’t student housing areas.
posted by andy on January 24th, 2008 at 6:53 pm eThat landlord is totally legendary. Some urban planning students I knew lived in one of his houses a few years ago and had endless stories.
posted by Brandon on January 24th, 2008 at 7:16 pm ehttp://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2201303622
posted by Brandon on January 24th, 2008 at 7:17 pm eThe City has a Neatness Patroll that is specifically targeted at building a revenue stream - its a great game. I live in the Pittsfield Village way far away from campus. Some guy got mad about something unrelated but turned our street in for having our trash cans stored in the wrong spot - no kidding warnings about $70 showed up in 24hrs. (takes a week to get repsonse from the city about anything else).
No wonder they call us “The Peoples Republic of Ann Arbor”…guess you have to drink the koolaid to avoid the reality of a City Government WAY out of control.
posted by lorie on January 24th, 2008 at 8:10 pm eIn fact, the reporter tried to speak to the frat guys in the subject houses, but no one was in.
Granted, the reporter could have talked to any of 40,000 other students, but there you are.
-A-
posted by AGB on January 24th, 2008 at 8:32 pm eGood point — I noted that above.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on January 24th, 2008 at 8:40 pm eMock, mock. Mock.
I lived in Ypsi for a while in the 70’s. On Cross St in the house to the east of the bank across from Pease. (is it still there?). I also lived in a house on Perrin, a big white house on Summit near Michigan, and around the corner on Michigan in a very old house (no longer standing).
The houses on Cross, Perrin and Summit were all owned by David Kircher, possible the most notorious landlord in Washtenaw County. He makes Zaki Alawi look like a choir boy. (The house on Michigan Ave was known as the Gutter and it housed a succession of far left, commy, socialist types including a past Mayor of Ypsi.)
In all those houses, WE (together, communally) took care of most of the repairs and maintenance. We also stiffed Kircher of many $$$. But the rules of engagement were different then. There were no housing codes in Ypsi or A2. It was caveat emptor. The difference was that we weren’t namby-pamby suburban kids whose rent was paid by mommy and daddy. It was strength in numbers. We fended for ourselves.
It’s different today. What most people do not understand is that codes are MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS that are BROADLY INTERPRETED. The rental housing codes (and codes in general) are purposely written in language that allows them to address a wide variety of situations and circumstances without needless detail. No code can be written that will cover everything in detail. Inspectors interpret the codes differently and are generally given latitude to make judgment calls based on health, safety and welfare of the residents in balance with property owners rights (Remember, we do not live in a socialist state.) Rental housing codes are NOT building codes. Rental housing inspectors cannot, by Michigan law, enforce the building codes and vice versa. Then there is something called “due process” that allows disputes (from either side) with the codes to work their way through the bureaucratic and legal systems that try to protect everyones rights under the law.
posted by mucho gusto on January 24th, 2008 at 9:56 pm eThe thing with renting to college kids, though, is that due process favors the landlords. The kids move on.
posted by Chris on January 25th, 2008 at 7:23 am eI heard a story about a house rented by 6 women. One day they smelled smoke but couldn’t find the source. They opened the windows and called the landlord; worried that they might be jeopardizing their security deposit. Not hearing back from the landlord they sat on the porch and drank beer … for a couple of hours! The smoldering became a fire, and before they noticed, it had spread though the basement and then to the first floor. AAFD were then called but the house was fully involved; a complete gut, right to the roof. It even scorched the adjacent house.
The cause, I was told, was discovered to be a space heater plugged into a fully filled power strip which was buried under a bunch of blankets.
So the landlord now has a few hundred dollars of security deposits and no building. Renters go on merry way, not responsible for the cost to repair the house. Assuming that the insurance would pay to repair / replace the building (but I am sure it was not a simple matter and I’ll bet the landlord did not get full replacement cost) the landlord is left without rent for maybe a year or so and is saddled with the arduous tasks of fighting with the insurance company and reconstructing the structure.
I do not have a dog in this fight but am just observing that both sides of this discussion have plenty of reason to be skeptical of the other. Glad not to be a renter or a rentee.
posted by abc on January 25th, 2008 at 9:09 am eWithout due process, we’d have anarchy. Due process protects everyone. The reason why it may seem to favor landlords is that tenants (primarily students in this case) take little interest in their housing and seem preoccupied with partying. Why should they care? Mummy and Daddy pay the rent.
The local rental housing code was written and adopted in 1987 by a committee of tenants, landlords and a couple of city officials including council members of that time. There was also representation from the Ann Arbor Tenants Union (are they still around? I think not) As my memory fades I cannot recall names, but Dave Devarti comes to mind.
Codes are usually written by professional writers familiar with the form. The Ann Arbor housing code was written by people with little experience or knowledge of how to write a legal document. It is very dependent on inspectors who are familiar with rental housing maintenance and repair issues and some experience with the building codes as well. Enforcement is also dependent on the liberal use of common sense and the ability of an inspector to discern what constitutes a hazard or potential hazard to health safety and welfare of the residents. City inspection services are perceived by many to be a necessary evil and that attitude filters down through the ranks. Yes, landlords have the political power and favor none or fewer regulations. Tenants want landlords to make their dwelling units to be like their parent’s homes. Inspectors try to do their best with little bureaucratic (political) support, a poorly written document and an apathetic, uninformed and distracted constituency.
Back in the day, tenants in A2 (primarily students) took it upon themselves to know their rights and responsibilities and some were actively involved in making landlords toe the line. Unfortunately most students these days are more interested in party games with little interest in improving their surroundings. Chris says it all, “Why should I care, the deck is already stacked against me.” If more tenants (students) were more concerned with their environment and not with their Playstations, things might be different.
posted by mucho gusto on January 25th, 2008 at 9:10 am eIt’s simply not true that due process favors the landlords. The landlords just know the law better than the tenants. Renters have all sorts of rights that they just don’t know about, unless they place a call to the tenants union (woops! where’d that go!? oh yeah, the MSA stopped funding it!) and no landlord (myself included!) is going to say to a tenant:
“You could write me a letter saying you don’t want me in your apartment without you there”
or
“You can stop paying me until I fix that”
or
“Feel free to stay here as long as you want. Eviction can take weeks to months, and I’m not allowed to throw your junk out of my house. It’s not worth my while to try to take you to court, either.”
When I was a student renting an apartment, I chose to live a bit farther off campus to avoid the garbage-y landscape of the neighborhoods near campus. A significant minority of people just out of high school haven’t figured out how to clean their rooms, let alone make sure their front yards aren’t strewn with last night’s beer pong detritus. Some lessons are best learned with a $70 ticket from the city.
Don’t think this is somehow limited to students homes. The city only gives a damn when someone calls to complain, at which point it doesn’t matter if you’re a renter or a homeowner. If I parked on my grass, my neighbors would have the cops come down on me like the hand of god. Someone down the street had some dandelions and ivy that was hanging literally 1″ over the edge of the sidewalk, and got a nastygram from the city saying they needed to make sure the sidewalk was cleared in 5 days.
It’s not just Ann Arbor, either. LOTS of other towns and cities are even more aggressive with this stuff.
posted by Patrick Austin on January 25th, 2008 at 9:41 am eBy national standards, Michigan’s landlord-tenant law is radically pro-tenant — I’m sure Perry Bullard had something to do with that. When I moved to Ithaca NY, I was shocked by what landlords could do legally.
Under Michigan law, the security deposit is the tenant’s money. Unless there is unpaid rent, or the tenant agrees, the landlord cannot withhold the security deposit without suing the tenant inside a short deadline. The security deposit is also limited to 150% of the monthly rent.
In Ithaca, the deposit was often 500% of the rent. And landlords often simply kept the money.
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on January 25th, 2008 at 10:02 am eI want to add a aphorism I learned long ago that fits well with the story related to us by abc
“The code protects the fool, but it can’t protect the stupid fool.”
posted by mucho gusto on January 25th, 2008 at 10:16 am eWhat code is that, the Code of Hammurabi? Lemme guess, you guys wrote that on Cross Street while you were smoking hash and flunking out of Eastern. And then John Sinclair and the Dead came over and you all dropped acid and barricaded yourselves in Dean Higgins’ office.
No, wait, that was “The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes.”
posted by Parking Structure Dude! on January 25th, 2008 at 12:56 pm ePatrick I wish I could agree with you that the city doesn’t treat student housing areas differently, but it’s simply not the case. While living in a student area I received a “nastygram” from the city about a bush that was over 48 inches high on a corner. The bush wasn’t over the sidewalk or in the area between the sidewalk and the street but fully onto the property. I simply trimmed it (even though technically I could have demanded that my landlord do it, since the contract said they were responsible for this type of stuff) I then drove to some of the nicer neighborhoods in Ann Arbor and reported about 50 other corner lots that were in violation. I checked throughout the rest of that summer and I’m pretty sure none of the homes received a “nastygram” or at least if they did they never acted on it.
I also once received a nastygram from the city for having a little bit of snow on the sidewalk. Technically it was snow that had been crushed into ice formed from everyone standing at the bus stop. The entire rest of my sidewalk was completely shoveled. The best part of the story is the same day I got the nastygram, my postal carrier thanked me for consistently having the cleanest sidewalk on his route.
MG thanks for answering my question from the earlier thread. I would find it interesting to talk to some of the “adults” in Ypsilanti from the 1970’s. I would guess many of them felt that your generation didn’t keep your yards as clean as they wanted. I think the fight between the generations probably goes back as far as humans have existed. I know townie-student disagreements in Ann Arbor go back more than 100 years.
posted by Andy on January 25th, 2008 at 1:46 pm eYeah, psd. All that and more. All this happened while you’re were a dribble of semen between yo mama’s thighs. She really enjoyed it and said she wouldn’t hit me with the paternity suit if she got pregnant.
In fact, the Code Of Hammurabi contained the beginnings of building codes complete with penalties.
posted by mucho gusto on January 25th, 2008 at 3:48 pm eLanguage, mu gu.
posted by David Boyle on January 25th, 2008 at 6:45 pm eLanguage? No dirty words here, Da Bo. Check some of psd’s posts if yer lookin’ for bad language. If psd wants to flame me (particularly off topic), he can go to my weblog and save everyone else the pain.
Fact. John Sinclair and I spent some time (although not at the same time) in the same holding cell in the Detroit Federal bldg.
posted by mucho gusto on January 26th, 2008 at 11:59 am eLived in several rentals in & around downtown A2.
posted by jayjay on January 26th, 2008 at 10:25 pm eIt’s disgusting everywhere downtown. Citizen’s should be disgusted with themselves! Don’t blame it on students. Who voted for all the bars? Chose to live outside the city. Now you assholes are moving out here cause your just as disgusted by what you’ve created.
Stay put in your cesspool.
If you don’t like the trash on your street, go out for a pleasant stroll and pick it up and deposit it in a garbage bag and deposit the garbage bag in a friendly dumpster. Wear gloves and work clothes, carry hand sanitizer.
Amazingly enough, if you start to clean up a street, it tends to stay cleaner.
Some reading:
“The Joys of Picking Trash by Aaron Wolfe”:http://www.mrbellersneighborhood.com/story.php?storyid=1557
posted by Edward Vielmetti on January 27th, 2008 at 1:29 am e“Surfari: Dumpster Renaissance”:http://www.net4tv.com/voice/story.cfm?storyid=3565
“Take your pick: the new frontier of savings”:http://www.imho-reviews.com/opinion/251_0_1_0_M/
well crap, that looked awful. figure it out.
posted by Edward Vielmetti on January 27th, 2008 at 1:29 am eWordPress doesn’t do Textile.
posted by Tom Brandt on January 27th, 2008 at 9:59 am eMan, kids these days… Causing a ruckus, making a mess.. you can’t tell the boys from the girls anymore.
posted by ex-suburbanite on January 27th, 2008 at 8:47 pm eThe worst thing I did was dump a bunch of junk down a cistern. Someday, I want to go back and uncap it, like a time capsule.
posted by Ypsidweller on January 28th, 2008 at 7:11 pm eDo “kids these days” need to know their rights like they used to? Don’t they engage in a cynical calculation that they will exceed their landlords (if they go to U Mich., anyway) — and the trash is part of the formula, even an emblem of it? Also, for all the 60s - 70s activism, what has happened is that the powers that be are better prepared to fend off and bewilder activists. Going to the holding tank isn’t going to do anything for you.
When I was at Mich I never touched a playstation because I was penned up in the stacks and had no time to study housing codes (altho it’s good stuff to know). When Mich kids party they are pretending to be lazier than they are, if they want to survive. The stereotype of a Michigan student sucking on a beer bong and thumbing Madden all day pertains to the experience of students of (or brief visitors to) other, lesser schools.
posted by toasty on January 30th, 2008 at 3:29 am eI just breezed through these posts, but it seems that there are a lot of comparisons of who’s the biggest scumbag here: The ticket writers, the student renters, or the landlords.
The thing is, there’s the technicalities of laws, rules, regulations, etc., and then there’s reality. Whoever said that people who complain and/or hate all the garbage should take a stroll and clean it up, and so it will remian cleaner, is very far removed from reality. There is absolutely 0 benefit to be had from strolling down State street and cleaning up in front of all the party houses, except for maybe 2 hours of cleanliness after the 14 hours it took you to clean it up. Then, the kids wake up and you will see the complete undoing of your efforts (both physical and moral) within minutes.
The student renters will never take care of the property. They will demolish, destroy, rot, putrify, and all the other synonyms you can find in Roget’s. The landlords are not blameless; they don’t fix anything because they don’t have to. They can charge the same rates as if the place had glistening grecian stone columns and a fountain out front, because people will pay it (especially the overprivileged kids whose parent foot the bill for everything because somehow it has become understood that the kid goes to college and gets a car and everything is the responsibility of the parent). In the landlords’ defense (not that they deserve it), the cost of fixing up a place after a 4-8-person demolition is enormous, and isn’t worth it when the same or worse is practically assured after just one semester lease.
This problem has lots of people to blame, but the most immediate is the kids; they will trash, they will destroy. Ticket them, come down on them hard, and you have a slight chance of, if not solving it, at least getting some guaranteed money for the city the same way taxing liquor and smokes will do. Start targetting landlords, and a similar end will be reached; landlords will pass that stuff right down to the students, and hopefully the city (or residents, or SOMETHING) will see some slight decline in the continuous and rapid degradation of homes and lawns.
Where to draw the line? I’m not sure, because some things are unsolvable. Kids will always trash places and not give a shit. Landlords will always follow the economics (can I get $600 per room even if I don’t fix up the place? If yes, then there you go. If no, they’ll fix it up). Economics and the nature of college students are a little more constant in the face of things like fines and tickets. All those little communities with association fees and rules can pretty much maintain standards, because the types of people that live there in general want it the way the rules are; otherwise, they wouldn’t live there. At a city level, things are little more difficult.
I say fine the absolute hell out of everybody and let the fallout from that determine where best to focus attention; are the kids keeping it cleaner, or are landlords staying on kids’ asses to do so? Then try and maintain a continued targeting of what’s getting the best results.
There are, of course, lots of confounding factors that make any solution difficult to measure in terms of its effectiveness, and will also be unfair to a large percentage of people involved given the situation. On the whole, while I realize that a lot of landlords are scumbags, they still have the least advantage. The way things are now, there is no economic advantage to being the landlord who cares about the property and tries to maintain some semblance of quality of life in his/her property. The laws COMPLETELY favor asshole tenants. The majority of students I’ve known are too lazy to do the footwork and really pursue the issue in a legitimate manner, but the majority of them also don’t really have to. I’ve been a student and have lived with a variety of student types in many offcampus rentals, and have seen a consistent legal tilt in favor of renters, regardless of their behavior and treatment of the property.
What it seems like is that the laws/regulations, etc. that govern the treatment of renter/landlord issues is similar to the underlying basis of the American legal system; it’s better that 1000 guilty people go free than to condemn one innocent person. Being that most landloards are scumbags, if renters had less working for them (legally) in times of arbitration, I’m sure there would be a veritable shitstorm of poor, helpless kids being taken advantage of. But in a callback to the whole “reality” aspect, there really isn’t a lot of danger of that going on at present. The reality is that students trash, landlords don’t have to care, and the situation continues to devolve.
I will add, now, that of all the experiences I’ve had with landlords, I was very thankful that I was able to call on the systems in place to take those landlord scumbags to task. However, I still believe, as I did back then, that the problem in GENERAL is not IMMEDIATELY with the landlords; it’s with the kids. If student renters had a little more reason to adhere to some type of civilized treatment of the property (if not behaviour overall), then we could tackle the NEXT problem, which would be the landlords. But without attacking the root of the problem and following the course up the ladder, there is no hope.
Now I’m going to click “submit” without reading what I typed, and then come back to see just how badly I handle these things when I do the whole “free flow” when posting. I’m guessing I’ll owe everyone here an apology.
posted by BecomingJaded on January 30th, 2008 at 8:31 pm eIf students, or even 5% of students, really were that bad, then all the student neighborhoods would have been reduced to a mess of rubble years ago.
I grew up among student houses in East Lansing, a block from the edge of the MSU campus. There were sixteen houses on our block, eight on each side of the street. Last I saw, all those houses are still there, and most of them look pretty good, after about fifty years of continuous student rental occupancy.
Sure, in a student neighborhood, you can sometimes find a pile of pizza boxes on a porch or something. But that’s not so hard to fix. Sure, you hear alarming anecdotes about malicious tenants or abusive landlords. But surely, over the past half-century, hundreds of thousands of U-M students have lived for a time in the Ann Arbor “student ghetto,” without ever breaking a window or knocking a hole in the wall.
There will always be horribly extreme cases. But on the average, landlords and tenants manage to work together pretty well, and meet each others’ needs as well as those of the community. On the average, neither landlords nor students deserve epithets like “scumbag”.
Nor is it accurate or productive to stereotype university students as pampered and arrogantly entitled children. Plenty of them are none of those things. In any case, regardless of life experience and financial arrangements, pretty much all of them are adults who are legally responsible for their own behavior and accountable for their own individual misdeeds. And most of them handle this pretty well.
We know enough to treat members of other demographic or economic groups as individuals. We wisely refrain from assuming characteristics and judge each on his or her own merits. Why are students exempt from this?
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on January 31st, 2008 at 1:50 am eIn terms of a “devolving” situation, what we are really looking at is consumption– the economic impetus so many anti-”People’s Republic” types would otherwise call beneficial. Students pay to use a property; they consume it according to their tendency; somebody makes a buck selling them the opportunity; somebody else makes a buck on the cleanup. If the place falls down (which it doesn’t) somebnody else makes a buck rebuilding it. This keeps the (beloved) economy running.
There is an internal contradiction in these aggregate attacks on “kids whose parents foot the bill” which also want to include Ann Arbor’s supposed “socialist” ethos as part of the problem.
There is no blame; there is only the fact of exchange. Give “the kids” an economic incentive to pay attention to rented property rather than their grades and they just might. (A true “People’s Republic” scenario: give a student a housing credit as part of tuition; the real capital of the housing used is transferrable upon leaving. Barring corruption– impossible, of course– a usuable unit is cashed in when student leaves.) Students only own their studenthood: this is their chief asset. Evreything else is expendable.
posted by toasty on January 31st, 2008 at 3:00 am eBeing in a fraternity on state street, we get a littering violation every single game day. We even got one at 11 AM on a saturday morning, 1 hour before the Ohio State game while our entire lawn was filled with people.
posted by Paul on February 10th, 2008 at 11:02 pm eLittering is no worse on game day in Ann Arbor than in most other big college sports towns. If it was really as bad as is it is said to be than the city would be a complete dump at this point.
posted by Tina Anderson on March 6th, 2008 at 1:37 pm e