LANSING, Mich. (WLNS) – Lansing City Council members grilled code enforcement and other city officials as the city sees a red-tag crisis among apartment buildings.
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For four hours Monday night, council members thoroughly went through a list of 23 questions aimed at getting a better idea of how the code enforcement process works and how red tags are handled by code enforcement employees.
After all the questions and follow-ups, both council members and city leaders agreed that more needs to be done.
“All of us are culpable in this situation, council, the administration, EDP and code compliance,” said Lansing City Council President Carol Wood.
Wood set the tone as council members heard from people struggling in the aftermath of their rental properties being marked unsafe. Voices in the community called for accountability.
Barb Kimmel, interim director of economic development and planning, was pressed on the state of red tags in Lansing and if code enforcement had enough officers to check on properties.
She said a primary issue for the office was not being fully trained on their tracking software which in turn made it difficult to track follow-up enforcement, duplicate reports and detailed searches.
“We have a lot of inspections that are incomplete, we have a lot of properties that are out of compliance. We don’t know the full extent of everything at this very moment,” said Kimmel.
Kimmel shared with the council that there is no set checklist for code enforcement officers to use something that came as a shock to several council members.
She said her office is working on better software training, recruiting a new code enforcement manager and the possibility of a third-party policy review. On city policy, Kimmel said she would like to see better management of blighted homes to ensure houses that are beyond repair are not auctioned, but rather demolished. In employee management, she said her office is looking into ways to improve productivity and restructuring workflow.
Officials with Human Relations and Community Services were also asked about their workload as they have seen many tenants coming from red-tagged units.
Councilmembers also pressed HRCS members on how the department reviews third-party organizations they work with as well as alternatives to hotel programs focused on emergency housing.
Mayor Schor was also pressed about the state of code enforcement and housing. He says he’s confident that performance will turn around.
“We’re doing a top to bottom review. And I think looking into the system and making sure we have an effective system moving forward is what we can do to make sure we are on top of these issues,” Schor said.
After the four-hour meeting, questions remained on what kind of ordinances are needed to help code enforcement uphold regulations.
That work as well as developing timelines for the changes were sent over to the city’s public safety committee.
