LOWELL — Shaun Shanahan climbed up the steep, narrow, wooden staircase, grabbing hold of a makeshift railing made of thin piping. The pipe easily shook as the city’s building commissioner showed how flimsy it was.

“See, that’s illegal,” he said.

One floor up, the next staircase had another problem: Instead of a railing, it had only two metal handles to grasp onto, both more than halfway up.

“That’s his idea of a structural fix,” Shanahan said.

This outdoor staircase provides a secondary egress for the dozen or so housing units in a building at the corner of East Merrimack and High streets, one of more than 40 properties across the city targeted in a new home-safety initiative by the city.

All those properties share one thing in common: They have chronic code violations because, the city says, their landlords have consistently ignored or skirted laws meant to keep tenants safe.

In the past, the city targeted only the worst properties. Because different inspections covered different neighborhoods, the city didn’t necessarily know that some of the same landlords owned those troubled properties.

In March, Lowell officials began reaching out to nine landlords they found to be the city’s worst in a drive to finally get them to comply.

The four-story white building at 69 High St. is owned by Lexington resident Syed Nuruzzaman, who has owned managed properties since 1976. He now runs about 60 properties in cities north of Boston, including Cambridge, Somerville and Melrose.

The Lowell property, which also goes by an address of 189 East Merrimack St., is his only one in Lowell. He said he has owned the building for 18 years.

City officials say they’ve battled with Nuruzzaman for years to fix a range of issues: leaky ceilings, exposed wiring, lack of stairwell lighting, and haphazard fixes like plastic lattice used to cover up horizontal beams on the edges of decks that are illegal because someone could fall through. In many cases, work is done without permitting, according to city officials.

Nuruzzaman — the only one of the nine landlords on the list to respond to request for comment — said in an interview that he has always done his best to keep up the property. On his own initiative, he said, he installed a sprinkler system at a cost of more than $100,000.

“For peace of mind and safety for tenants,” he said. “A lot of families live there.”

After seven people were killed in an apartment fire on Branch Street last July, Nuruzzaman said, he asked the city for an inspection to make sure something like that wouldn’t happen in his building.

“That’s probably the greatest mistake I did, ever,” he said.

Once the city took a look, he said, inspectors kept coming up with lists of new fixes he needed. When he was unable to clear out that exterior egress after heavy snow in February, he was fined $9,000. In all, he has been fined more than $12,000 this year, a sum he said he’s appealing.

“It’s one thing after another,” Nuruzzaman said. “Nothing satisfied them.”

Nuruzzaman said he wants to sell the building to avoid having to try to satisfy the city any longer. That news was welcomed by the city.

“I want to run away from the city and never come back,” Nuruzzaman said.

‘Zero remorse’

While Nuruzzaman hasn’t brought the property into compliance, the city has actually had better success with him than some others.

Sherri Lim has had longtime violations on properties she owns on Hanover, Middlesex and Westford streets, according to officials. She has responded to none of the city’s attempts to remedy the violations, according to City Hall.

Lim “has absolutely zero remorse” for the range of violations, Assistant City Manager Michael McGovern said.

Another landlord the city has also not heard back from is Dara Kong, who owns apartments on Branch and Bellevue streets. Kong can’t claim to not know firsthand the severity of the issue: She lives in one of those buildings herself, a two-family home at 125 Bellevue St.

Complaints have been filed in Housing Court against both.

Others on the worst-landlords list have had varying degrees of cooperation with the city.

Joseph Labate — who owns properties on Bowers, Elm and Pawtucket streets — brought all of the sites into compliance since the city told him he was part of the city’s initiative targeting landlords who’ve piled up the most violations. He lives in the Pawtucket Street property, according to the city.

Taing Chhinggis of Branch Street, who owns properties on Branch, Leroy, Loring and Wilder streets, as well as Pawtucket Boulevard, has also fixed each of the properties.

Others have done less.

Luke Chiotelis owns seven properties in the city with safety-compliance issues, including not meeting fire-escape requirements or health inspections. Since being alerted in March that his properties were being targeted in the new enforcement effort, the Bedford resident has brought only one of those properties into compliance.

John Nacopoulos — whose long-standing issues with building codes and tenants was detailed in a Sun story in April — has made repairs at only three of the seven properties he owns.

James and Sheila Hulings have repaired only two of their six properties.

Dein Tran, who owns three properties on Merrimack Street and one on Lilley Avenue, has brought only one of those into compliance, according to the city.

in NEED of change

City Manager Kevin Murphy started the program, called the Neighborhood Expedited Enforcement Directive, or NEED, earlier this year as part of a broader campaign to make the city’s housing units safer.

Murphy said he sees safe places to live as just as important an aspect of public safety as making sure police officers are on the streets.

In a city with 15,000 to 17,000 rental units, it’s a difficult task. Nearly all of the units meet compliance, according to city officials who monitor violations. A small percentage are frequent offenders, and tenants are typically poor and often don’t speak English as their native language — the type of people who are less likely to turn to the city to complain about living conditions.

The city began reaching out to the nine worst landlords in March, and for much of the time since have had little cooperation from the owners. More recently, the landlords are finally starting to adhere to codes that the city says they’ve long ignored.

“I think they were embarrassed to have their names associated with the list,” said Eric Slagle, the city’s director of development services, whose offices oversees code enforcement.

Paul Winchester, a senior inspector for the city, said many landlords had a long way to go to make their properties as safe as they needed to be.

“Very few passed the first time,” he said.

In the months since the NEED program began, the city has levied upwards of $30,000 in fines against the nine landlords for lack of compliance. Not a weekday goes by in which city inspectors aren’t in touch with those landlords, said Shanahan, the building commissioner.

City officials said they’ve run into cases of landlords saying they weren’t aware of regulations, even when several have owned properties for more than 10 years. Properties require a certificate of inspection every five years, for example, and many said they weren’t aware such a certificate was needed.

Lowell has the authority to issue daily fines but is only doing so weekly, at $1,000 per property. The point of the program isn’t to levy fines but to make housing units safe.

“We want to be fair and reasonable here,” McGovern said.

Once these nine landlords are in compliance, the city expects to move on to the next-worst owners.

“We don’t see this as a one-shot deal,” Slagle said.

Follow Grant Welker on Twitter and Tout @SunGrantWelker.