What makes a slumlord? Pattern of low-quality, neglected houses points the way
Mayor Mike Rawlings hasn’t quite figured out his definition of a slumlord, but I suspect he’ll know it when he sees it. Rawlings told me recently that he wants to find ways to pressure large-scale owners of single-family rental houses in southern Dallas to change their business models and upgrade their properties’ appearance. The business model is one that puts a higher priority on profits over the quality of the dwellings they rent to low-income southern Dallas residents.
If you go through Dallas County records, you’ll notice a familiar pattern: Just a few large-scale owners (people who rent out more than 20 properties) account for a very high volume of crummy houses that are dragging down property values and reducing the quality of life for everyone living nearby. These houses are often boarded up when they’re empty, which all by itself is a deterrent to anyone thinking of living in the area. People throw bulk trash in the driveway. Windows get broken. Vagrants and scavengers move in. Code citations build up.
No, it’s not always the owners’ fault that their properties get targeted by vandals. But they make the conscious choice to buy these properties to begin with — normally for just a few thousand dollars at a sheriff’s auction — and do the absolute minimum with paint and patch jobs to make them habitable. It is a formula for degradation. And the people they rent to have zero incentive to keep up appearances, which tends to hasten the deterioration.
I’ve done a database search of Dallas County residential property records, and just four companies account for nearly 700 of the worst-quality rental houses in the county. By worst quality, I mean houses that are listed by the Dallas County Central Appraisal District as being in either poor, very poor or unsound condition. All but a few of those houses are in southern Dallas. I’ve color coded them by condition.
Rawlings wants to look not only at the pattern of renting out low-quality housing but also the pattern of code violations that pile up against certain owners. When they match these criteria, they qualify as slumlords, and he wants to bring the owners in for a stern talk about the damage they’re doing to southern Dallas.
“We would bring each of those folks in, and we would say: ‘This is how many properties you have, these are the properties that aren’t in code. We need you to do X, Y and Z to them. We would like you to do that, but we’re really serious about it because we will come down in a serious manner if you don’t,’” Rawlings told me.
I’d like to offer up four owners for starters – Khraish H. Khraish’s HMK Ltd., the Topletz family, G.W. Works, and Joseph Bevers’ JB III Investments — for a meeting with the mayor. All have a lengthy history of code violations, and you can click on the icons in the map above to see where their properties are located.
I don’t have any illusions that they will dramatically change their behavior. But maybe some should consider getting out of the rental business and find ways to follow the Habitat for Humanity model of fixing these houses up and selling them to residents at very low mortgage interest rates — provided the sellers can obtain the proper mortgage licencing. The idea is to instill the pride of ownership among more people, which will help them take responsibility for the look and feel of the neighborhoods they live in. That’s the first step toward forming neighborhood associations and getting people involved, which is a key goal of Rawlings’ GrowSouth initiative.