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The city of Dallas is once again reconsidering how to handle what it considers nuisance properties.
Earlier this month, the Public Safety Committee approved changes that will allow the city to dub certain properties “elevated risk areas” for not meeting certain minimum requirements.
The city code defines minimum property maintenance and management standards in Dallas. The standards for maintaining multi-tenant properties, for example, include exterior lighting and security tools such as surveillance cameras. The standards for managing these properties include crime prevention addendums and attendance at crime watch safety meetings, among other conditions.
At the Oct. 11 Public Safety Committee meeting, Kevin Oden, interim director for the Office of Integrated Public Safety Solutions, explained how Dallas has generally dealt with nuisance properties over the years.
A location is designated a habitual criminal property after five instances of certain criminal offenses take place there. These can include criminal mischief, marijuana or controlled substance possession, assault with a deadly weapon, and deadly conduct. At that point, the city and Dallas Police Department will ask the property owner to implement certain crime prevention measures.
These measures revolve around something called Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (or CPTED) standards. The city says these measures “are proven to overwhelmingly reduce criminal activity.” The measures could include, but aren’t limited to, surveillance and access control and territorial reinforcement (like installing gates.)
If you don’t do what the city asks and you can’t prove you’ve taken reasonable steps to abate crime, they can slap your place with a habitual criminal property designation that includes annual fines. They could also take you to court.
But Oden said there are some problems with this way of doing things.
For one, state law restricts how much the city can fine property owners. Because of this, property owners may see the fines as a cost of doing business, according to the city. On top of that, the city has a problem with the language in Chapter 27 that says CPTED standards “may” be recommended, and enforcement “may” occur if these recommendations aren’t followed.
“The potential for abuse by the city is enormous.” – Nathaniel Barrett, local developer
The problem with going after these property owners with lawsuits is that these cases have a pretty high litigation threshold requiring that a location present “substantial danger” or be a “place where persons go to commit abatable criminal activity,” which isn’t always the easiest thing to prove. Even if the city has a good case, it says the process to get a court order and get the property owner in compliance can be lengthy.
“With all of this considered, parts of our city experience nuisance behavior that continues to negatively affect neighboring communities’ quality of life at the expense of valuable city resources,” Oden said.
He cited as an example an area in Northwest Dallas that was recently assigned to DPD and the Integrated Public Safety Solutions team. Oden said the area includes a large multifamily complex that is completely open, lacks surveillance and borders a business center where crimes often occur.
“The multi-tenant complex shows as the incident location for many of the offenses taking place,” Oden said. “Further analysis and block walks have also shown that most of the incidents that occur are because poor CPTED standards are being implemented in an area at high risk to violence.”
That’s why the city is looking to enhance this chapter of its code by changing the way it defines a “public safety nuisance.”
If approved by the City Council, a public safety nuisance would be defined as any property that doesn’t abide by certain minimum property standards or is designated a habitual criminal or habitual nuisance property; and is in an area identified by the city’s office of integrated solutions as being at an elevated public safety risk.
The city says that about 5% of Dallas is considered to be at an elevated public safety risk. Still, not all of the properties will meet the other requirements for Chapter 27 enforcement. The city would determine if areas are at elevated public safety risk through what’s called risk terrain modeling, which looks at how physical characteristics of an area can contribute to crime.
The locations in these areas that haven’t abided by minimum property standards would then be required to implement specific CPTED measures to avoid fines or litigation by the city. Property owners would have to implement these CPTED measures with their own money.
Under the new rules, if approved, a property owner whose property isn’t meeting minimum standards would get a notice from the city saying they’re required to implement CPTED measures. From there, the owner could ask the city to provide specific recommendations. If the owner then fails to implement or maintain these recommendations, the city may “abate the nuisance and lien the property for the associated costs.”
The next step could be litigation.
The way the code reads now, property owners may never even hear about CPTED standards until the city sends them a notice explaining that their place may be designated a habitual criminal property. By then, the city’s enforcement mechanisms have already kicked in and the damage (the repeated criminal offenses) has already been done. So, the city is billing this as an “off ramp” for that enforcement in an effort to get more voluntary compliance (more property owners voluntarily implementing CPTED standards).
But local real estate developer Nathaniel Barrett sees some problems with the city’s proposal. “The potential for abuse by the city is enormous,” he said.
“I’m worried that the city would throw a broad net and say, ‘This is a high-crime area. We’re just going to throw a designation on the area,'” Barret said. “Then they throw the book at the owners in the area regardless of whether or not they’ve addressed or are having issues. Depending on how these areas are designated, there’s just the potential for a disfavored party to be targeted for additional enforcement and just create a lot of headache for poor property owners and residents that really isn’t necessary.”
However, the city maintains this new nuisance category would be objective and non-discretionary. The City Council could approve these changes at its Oct. 26 meeting.
