Some kind of financial penalty for chronically negligent landlords is reasonable, and using the number of building inspection calls to approximate the degree of negligence might be reasonable. (The experience of having rented apartments in a college town gives me very little sympathy for bad landlords.)

But Brenda Konkel’s argument against a proposal to fine landlords if there are too many inspections or police calls to their buildings seems persuasive to me.

Not to mention that the idea sounded absurd in the first place (the connection between dilapidated housing and crime is indirect, and creating criminal penalties on that basis seems rather illiberal). Surely there are better ways to target property owners who fail to keep their rental units in acceptable condition.

Posted by Ben Brothers at 1:54 pm, 8 May 2007 and filed under Madison News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.