The Landlord and Tenant Issues subcommittee of the Madison Housing Committee met Wednesday to discuss ways to enhance enforcement of tenants' rights. Conversation centered on what keeps tenants' rights from being enforced, and how enforcement, particularly of chapter 32 of the city ordinance, dealing with tenant and landlord rights, can be increased.
The subcommittee made a list of recurring and egregious tenants' rights enforcement failures, which included security-deposit deductions, landlord entry, changing locks, turning off utilities and retaliation, the practice of landlords taking revenge on tenants after they complains to the building inspector.
Tenants rights is 'a perennial issue' said Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4, and there has been a 'lack of meaningful enforcement of our tenants' rights laws.'
According to Verveer, almost all tenants' rights laws must be enforced by the tenant.
'[The police] have had qualms about getting involved with civil issues,' added Ald. Brenda Konkel, District 2.
When tenants call the police to report infringements on their rights, dispatchers do not make the complaints a priority. Instead, the complaints are entered into a computer and disappear after one hour, Konkel said.
City Attorney Eunice Gibson said police have 'indicated that they see themselves as peacekeepers' and that there are enough reports of violence to landlord-tenant issues keep police from dealing with landlord-tenant issues.
Tripp Widder, a member of the subcommittee, suggested that the scope of what the police can enforce should be reduced to increase police involvement.
'I think [the police] just say 'the hell with it,'' when confronted with multiple responsibilities concerning landlord-tenant issues, Widder said.
Police involvement could be increased, Widder said, 'if you reduce it to the two most egregious and the two most easy to identify' violations.
Konkel said she agrees that chapter 32 needs some reevaluation.
'I do think that we need to reexamine which items in chapter 32 the police can give tickets for,' she said.
However, Konkel said she thinks the police should be able to enforce more than just two offenses.
Verveer said Madison's landlord-tenant laws are not meaningless, that most landlords obey the law and that this is a matter of those few landlords who don't.
'I think it's going to be a multifaceted approach,' he said. 'We should have a much more user friendly way to get justice.'
