Thursday, May 24, 2018

News 12 at 5:30 / News 12 @ 6 O'clock / NBC 26 News

RICHMOND COUNTY, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) - You could call it a no-win situation: stay in an unsafe home or call Code Enforcement for help and risk eviction and fines.

The deeper On Your Side dug into city records, the more we uncovered. We found a problem much deeper than a landlord-tenant complaint.

The problem falls on the city because we discovered Code Enforcement is not enforcing the code.

In a South Augusta neighborhood, a home is for rent. It's not fancy, but all Latoya Goodwin needs is a safe place to call home. "It's seeping out of here with me and my kids asleep! My kids could have been dead," Goodwin told us. The gas company just found a leak in her home.

Latoya Goodwin: "That took three months."

Liz Owens: "Three months to save up for a deposit and first month's rent?"

Latoya Goodwin: "Yes."

Liz Owens: "Now this place is…"

Latoya Goodwin: "Condemned? Yes."

A few weeks earlier, Code Enforcement took pictures of a home on Wrightsboro Road. A woman told them she put a deposit down but found the home a mess when she came to move in. Inspectors determined there were life safety violations.

Ming Lin is the owner of both condemned homes.

Liz Owens: "Did you give her deposit and first month's rent back?"

Ming Lin: "No of course not! I didn't do anything wrong."

Liz Owens: "You have a lot of code violations over the years, why is that?"

Ming Lin: "First off, I've got a lot of properties."

We found he has more than 40 in Richmond County. Nine are currently in violation of the minimum housing and property maintenance codes.

Liz Owens: "Some of these violations are pretty serious."

Ming Lin: "I was able to answer all of your questions. You tell me something specific."

Liz Owens: "Okay, let's say the Pamplona one."

News 12 first reported on the Pamplona drive two years ago. Robin Norris called us after she found a letter from Code Enforcement. The letter was dated less than two months before she moved in. The letter listed a string violations including dangerous problems with the hot water heater and a warning that a "person should not occupy."

"I was scared because in my son's room the ceiling fan light had caught fire. We had to go up in the attic and put the fire out with a fire extinguisher," Norris said.

She called Code Enforcement. What Norris didn't know was she was the third tenant from Pamplona to report the house to Code Enforcement.

Liz Owens: "Mr. Lin promised to make all of these repairs before I moved and told me if I called Code Enforcement he would evict me. And then you do."

Ming Lin: "Let's put it this way, I told them if you are going to play dirty with us there will be no understanding from us."

Lin did evict Norris. He told the court she abused the property. It's the same property Code Enforcement condemned long before Norris moved in. Still, the court orders Robin Norris to pay landlord Lin $850.

Liz Owens: "There is a couple of cases I've seen where Code Enforcement has come in and condemned a property and gave the date the tenant has to be out, and you still file eviction paperwork."

Ming Lin: "Well, that's my right. That's my right.

That's because Georgia is one of eight states without a law protecting tenants from landlords who retaliate.

On Your Side went through more than a hundred evictions filed by landlord Ming Lin. We compared eviction dates in the Magistrate's computer system with the dates of violations in Code Enforcement's computer system. On Your Side found more than a dozen cases where landlord Lin evicts his renters days after they report him to Code Enforcement.

"If everything about me is wrong why is it the court cases I'm winning? Why is that I am garnishing them? Why don't they all come sue me?" Lin said.

He's won more than $250,000 in court from evicting his tenants over the last seven years. Many of his tenants will tell you it's a struggle to make ends meet. There is no money left to pay an attorney to sue the landlord who has just evicted them.

So, On Your Side went digging into the evictions, and found a pattern that allows family after family to move into homes that Code Enforcement deems dangerous. We also found Code Enforcement isn't enforcing the codes.

Liz Owens: "You're homeless?"

Latoya Goodwin: "Yes right now with eight children."

Latoya Goodwin goes to the Homeless Resource Center for help while her landlord of less than a month goes to the courthouse to evict her and is suing her for more than $1300.

Liz Owens: "Have you filed an eviction on her?"

Ming Lin: "No, not yet."

Liz Owens: "But you plan to?"

Ming Lin "Yeah."

Liz Owens: "Even though she was only here a week?"

Ming Lin: "Yeah if she doesn't do her part. The contract is two sides."

Liz Owens: "But Code Enforcement did tell her you have to leave. It's dangerous to stay here."

Ming Lin: "That's between them and Code Enforcement. What's between here and I is our contract. She suppose to pay rent and she doesn't..."

Terrence Wynder is the manager of Richmond County's Code Enforcement.

Here's how that department is supposed to operate:

Tenant calls them -- they find violations -- they send a certified letter to the landlord -- the landlord has 30 days to make repairs or demolish.

After 30 days, Code Enforcement re-inspects. If the landlord fails to make repairs, the inspector asks the marshal to serve the landlord with a citation. The landlord then goes before a judge.

After pouring through hundreds of documents, News 12 found Code Enforcement is not always following that process and it's putting families in danger.

Liz Owens: "Why you didn't go back in there 30 days later?"

Terrence Wynder: "Once the property is vacant there is no unsafe issue anything imminent because the tenant is not on that property.

Liz Owens: "But that would be a way of not getting it done, right?"

Terrence Wynder: "What's that?"

Liz Owens: "To evict the person?"

Terrence Wynder: "For him?"

Liz Owens: "Yes."

Terrence Wynder: "Well, it prolongs the situation. Yes, it does."

It certainly prolonged Code Enforcement re-inspecting Pamplona, again rented three times to three different tenants with code violations gone unchecked.

It happened to a home in Riddle Lane, too. In 2014, Code Enforcement wrote: "It's unsafe and does not need to be occupied." They did not return to re-inspect.

We found at least three tenants lived in the "unsafe" home over the next four years. We found a similar story at a home on Dayton Street. Last year, inspectors found electrical problems. Ming Lin evicted the tenant who called them.

Inspectors did not come back until a new tenant called eight months later. They find the same electrical problems in the home for the second time. Have they gone back?

Their report shows the reinspection is still pending.

Liz Owens: "14, 15, 15, 16, and the case is still open and there still hasn't been a follow-up."

Terrence Wynder: "I think what you are dealing with here is before a followup is made the tenant is always evicted."

On Your Side went door-to-door at homes owned by other landlords. We found Code Enforcement is not always re-inspecting even when someone does lives in the home.

A family on Eve Street made their first call to Code Enforcement three years ago. "My mom shouldn't have to walk three blocks to get water.

She shouldn't have to use the porta potty that he puts out in the front yard for her," a woman living there told us. The inspector found a broken sewer line and no running water in the home.

He sent a violation letter to the landlord to fix it within 3 days. The inspector did not return until the family called to complain again, two years later.

Code Enforcement second violation letter to the landlord, but, yet again, the inspector didn't follow up.

A year later, the family called a third time about other problems in the home. This time the inspector told them they need to vacate. The reinspection is still pending.

A re-inspection is still pending on an Ellis Street home too. Bobby Laws does his best to navigate through the broken slabs on the floor with his walker. A year ago, Code Enforcement sent a letter to the landlord.

They told him he couldn't rent the home until all of this was fixed. If the inspector came back he would have found Mr. Laws living there.

Terrence Wynder: "We do reinspections on all properties."

Liz Owens: "But some of these go on for years."

Terrence Wynder: "I have to disagree on that."

Liz Owens: "Don't you think this is extremely dangerous because another tenant gets put in there. We are talking serious issues."

Terrence Wynder: "Yeah, depends on what the issues are. If it talks about electrical it is an unsafe issue the building is falling in which these are not."

But, we did find unsafe issues like electrical. Remember the home on Pamplona? Inspectors found a problem with the panel box in 2016. It seems that problem somehow disappeared without doing a re-inspection.

Code Enforcement found the home in compliance last year. A family now lives there.

Terrence Wynder: "The electrical was fixed."

Liz Owens: "How do you know it was fixed because you said you never went out there and saw it?"

Terrence Wynder: "Yeah we never went out and did another inspection but the electrical was fixed."

Liz Owens: "Did you see receipts?

Terrence Wynder: "The receipts for service?"

Terrence Wynder: "No, we don't have any."

Liz Owens: "You're just taking his word?"

Terrence Wynder: "No, we are not taking his word. This was something going on with the breaker system."

But back to landlord Ming Lin, who believes most of his violations are unfair. "You believe Code Enforcement is targeting you?" Liz Owens asked him. "No question about it," he said.

However, records show Code Enforcement rarely punishes him.

Remember the violation process? If the landlord fails to make repairs then the inspector asks the marshal to serve the landlord with a citation.

The landlord then goes before a judge. Three times last year, inspectors asked the marshals to serve Ming Lin with a citation. Not once did it go through.

The citations requests read, "The director of Code Enforcement called me and told me to hold off on these citations at this time."

"I don't know if that was me that could have been the director of the department," Wynder said.

On Your Side took our findings to the Marshal's Office. "When you see those cases like that someone is taking advantage of the system," Marshal Ramone Lamkin said.

More accurately, the lack of a system. "Code Enforcement and Marshal's Office operate off of two different databases.

We just have eviction paperwork. We get an eviction to go serve at this address we have no idea what Code Enforcement violations until they call us and ask us to issue a citation for it," he told us.

Three systems in place to protect families from unsafe properties and none with a complete picture of what is happening over and over and over again.

Liz Owens: "Do you agree some peoples lives have been in danger."

Terrence Wynder: "To that point? No."