. Predatory Renting

Statement of Need

The Gary Human Relations Commission in an effort to further enforce fair housing and meet the demand for safe, sanitary and habitable housing gin the community, as well as, establish a working relationship with the City of Gary's Building Department and Consumer Affairs, must initially identify a mechanism to better track pattern a practices of those that prey on our Community.

There is currently on staff person responsible for intake of complaints from the community regarding housing complaints. At the current time there is no system implemented between the three City of Gary Departments (the Commission, Building Department and Consumer Affairs) for tracking ht various housing complaints each department independently receive. In order to accomplish the task at hand, and additional person/coordinator is needed.

This Coordinator would take the responsibility for the establishment of an Ad-Hoc Committee comprised of a member from each department that can report on their department's activities with the development of a program/system that will identify the different types of housing complaints being reported to the various department. The program/system should also identify any patterns of practices utilized by the Slumlords, in an effort to assist each department in enforcing their jurisdiction. The final phase would be to draft a proposal for an ordinance to be presented to the City of Gary's Administration that would establish a system whereby anyone wishing to rent a dwelling in the city has to register.

Through this project the agency has identified the following objectives:

• Development of a reporting system with regards to housing complaints, and tracking the progress of the compliance to and the progress of the correction of those problems once the complaint has been filed one of the three city departments.
  
  
• Generate reports with regard to the analysis of the types of housing complaints being filed in the three departments
  
  
• Analyze data from the reports which can be shared information to assist in the enforcement of the jurisdiction of the three departments
  
  
• Draft a proposal for an ordinance to be presented to the City of Gary's administration recommending that all property owners in the business of property rental in the City of Gary must register as a Landlord.
  
  

The proposed "PREDATORY RENTING" projects covers the period of one (1) year. This project is budget at Twenty Thousand Dollars ($200,000).