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Concerns about landlords exploiting vacate orders for demolition

0:51:48

·

81 sec

Council Member Gutiérrez expresses concerns about some landlords potentially exploiting vacate orders to pursue demolitions instead of making necessary repairs. She emphasizes the need for greater barriers in the demolition application process for buildings under vacate orders.

  • Gutiérrez acknowledges that not all landlords have bad intentions
  • She highlights instances where landlords may be delaying repairs to pursue demolition
  • The council member calls for measures to ensure landlords demonstrate that demolition is absolutely necessary and that they've attempted repairs
Jennifer Gutiérrez
0:51:48
Okay.
0:51:48
So part of the intention of this bill and Chair Sanchez mentioned it was, you know, it's not every not every landlord not every landlord is a bad landlord.
0:51:58
I work with landlords in my district that do wanna bring tenants back and are also frustrated by the bureaucracy, but there are some landlords whose intention is not to bring tenants back, and so we've seen a high percentage of these instances where landlords are sitting on these vacate orders, making no attempt to remediate and then ultimately asking for demolitions and you know, once that's in place, there's no pathway for these tenants, so what we're asking for is for greater barriers in these instances where they have to demonstrate that the demolition is absolutely, absolutely necessary, and that they're demonstrating that they've tried, that they've been trying to make a raise, and I know, and again, I've spoken to landlords, I know that that is a small percentage, that that does happen, but our concern is it often makes it so that some of these landlords are sitting on their hands waiting, making very little effort, and don't have to demonstrate that and can just ask for a demolition because their building experienced a fire and there's a vacate order.
Yigal Shemash
0:53:03
Understood, and be happy to work with you on that.
Jennifer Gutiérrez
0:53:06
Thank you.
0:53:06
I have another question, but I'll wait for round two.
0:53:09
Thank you so much, cheers.
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