Imagine a situation where an armed robber breaks into your home, but maybe you do or don’t have a means to defend yourself. What you do have is a phone with access to 911, and let us pretend for a moment that the local cops can get there in time to save you. What would keep you from using the phone in that situation?
Well, thanks to the efforts of Bloomberg-ally and MAIG Mayor Tom Leighton, you might lose your home if you call the police. You may face permanent eviction if you dare call the police while in danger. If you live paycheck-to-paycheck and can’t afford another place to live, then maybe you hide in the closet and hope for the best instead of calling the police.
See, this MAIG mayor has instituted a “one-strike ordinance†that allows his city to shut down any property for up to six months (without a hearing or notice) if the property is ever the site of a single gun or drug crime.
Another town instituted a similar rule that, instead of shutting down a property, fines the landlords as punishment, and a victim of domestic violence was threatened with eviction after the police were called to help her. When the boyfriend showed up again and stabbed her in the neck, she was too fearful of losing a roof over her young daughter’s head to call the police. Even as she was bleeding from her wounds, she pleaded with her neighbors not to call the police on her attacker because she and her daughter would be the ones punished and left without a home.
That case has resulted in litigation, and despite seeing the impact of this rule on a domestic violence victim, MAIG Mayor Leighton stands by using the one-strike ordinance, even if the ultimate result is to punish the poor for calling police when trouble lurks in their neighborhoods.
By supporting efforts to disarm citizens, Leighton forces them to rely on police. Now he’s punishing those who do rely on the police and who cannot afford to move if their landlords evict them because they dared call the police while in danger.
Some of the victims should lynch that SOB!!!
Merle
Does this apply to buisnesses too?
Will a convenience store get shut down after a robbery?
Because then you can add getting fired / losing your buisness to getting evicted / losing your houw
Way to blame the victim MAIG!
It applies ONLY to rental property, as far as I can tell.
(Though that link is to a site that isn’t very good at things like “links to sources” of any sort, which is half-unforgivable for an only-online publication these days.
It’d be nice if it included links to any number of the things it mentioned, like the ACLU complaint, and if it exists online at all, the text of the ordinance itself.)
Holy cow that’s terrible. How can that even be legal?
Some argue that the lack of any due process isn’t legal. The town that has the fine system is already being sued, and the ACLU is involved, I believe. The MAIG town is now under threat of a lawsuit, and it will likely be challenged.
It doesn’t matter if it’s legal or not. They’ll keep doing it until someone makes them stop.
What town?
Wilkes-Barre, PA
It’s all for public safety, people. If you oppose us shuttering your neighbor’s house, then we’ll public safety you out of a home, too!
Police. State.
I’ve lived in apartments where the unofficial, unwritten, spoken-in-hushed-tones policy was: if the police knock on someone’s door for any reason, they get evicted.
For any reason.
File a domestic violence report? Evicted.
Witness/report a crime and need to answer questions? Evicted.
Get burglarized/robbed? Evicted.
I imagine it’s only a matter of time before that property management company gets sued over their unofficial-yet-rigidly-enforced policy, but because they run inexpensive housing (not subsidized or designated low-income; just older, somewhat run-down buildings with low rent), it’s unlikely anyone affected will be able to afford a lawyer anytime soon.
Does the Mayor own his own home? Perhaps a bit of sauce for the gander is in order.
It’s up to the whim of the city to enforce the “one-strike ordinance,” so they would simply choose not to punish the property owner, regardless of whether it’s him or a landlord.
Are these people secretly super-villains? What is their justification for doing this?
To reduce gun- and drug-related violence, of course!
For the children!!!
The facts that A) it won’t reduce either; B) it disproportionately affects low-income residents; and C) shutting down a property for a half-year practically invites squatters to the neighborhood and will more than likely result in an increase in the very crimes it’s supposed to reduce – are irrelevant.
It feels good, so they’ll do it.
And besides, it’s For the children!!!
Tar. Feathers. Some assembly required.
Rope, lamp post; some assembly required.