Cleveland has sent 2,477 tickets to landlords who haven’t registered their rental properties so far this year, the first test of the city’s newest plan to enforce housing laws.

After getting tickets, owners submitted applications for about 12% of the rentals. The vast majority haven’t paid the $200 fine that comes with the ticket.

The large-scale effort comes nearly a year after Building and Housing Director Sally Martin O’Toole told landlords to prepare for enforcement of the rules. Since then, Martin O’Toole said, her team has been building the infrastructure necessary to issue civil tickets to landlords who ignore laws that help the city track rental housing and ensure units are safe for tenants.  

The first big test came in October, when the department sent out about 1,600 violation tickets to the owners of unregistered rentals.

Cleveland’s new Residents First law, passed by City Council in February 2024, created the option to issue tickets. Before that, Cleveland had to charge landlords criminally to get them to comply. That system wasn’t working well, Martin O’Toole said. Many didn’t come to court, especially if they lived out of town.

Civil tickets don’t require court. They cost $200 apiece and get added to property taxes if unpaid.  

“So it starts to get the attention of people, especially out-of-towners,” Martin O’Toole said.

That’s certainly true, said Zak Burkons, who owns a business that helps landlords navigate the city’s housing and lead safe laws. He’s getting an influx of calls from property owners with questions about the tickets. 

Burkons believes the city is using them as a revenue source to cover budget shortfalls. He pointed to an estimate the city made last year, to cleveland.com, that tickets could bring in $2 million in revenue.

“They’re looking to make this into a cash cow for the city,” Burkons said. “And the people who are gonna get hurt in the end are going to be the tenants.”

The city said this isn’t true: The tickets are meant to improve compliance with Cleveland housing laws. As for the money, the city has so far issued more than $830,000 worth of tickets. It’s brought in about $120,460 so far, Martin O’Toole said. The fines collected go into the city’s general fund. 

The city is beginning its enforcement with landlords who it knows are operating rental properties but have not even begun the registration process. Many of those are properties with tenants who use housing vouchers, or federal government rental assistance. 

“They’re getting public money to rent their property, but yet they have not complied,” Martin O’Toole said. “… So those people were very easy to spot and identify.” 

The city will next look at property owners who began to register but didn’t complete the process, she added. That could mean failing to submit all the necessary documents, like a certificate showing the home is safe from lead. The new Residents First law added these requirements. 

Tenant advocates say there’s still a long way to go in enforcing the new law. About 56,700 rental units were registered as of early November. That’s about 7,000 more than Signal Cleveland reported this June but likely still tens of thousands short of total units in the city.  

“I don’t know if it’s the level I hope to see,” Spencer Wells, a co-founder of the nonprofit Cleveland Lead Advocates for Safe Housing, said of the city’s ticketing efforts. CLASH supported the city’s effort to pass the Residents First law. “But it’s a start. That’s good.”

How Cleveland landlords can respond to tickets 

Under Residents First, the city can now pass out tickets for a variety of housing issues: code violations, failing to join the rental registry or failing to get a lead safe certificate. 

When property owners get one of these tickets, they have a couple of options, Martin O’Toole said. 

One option is to pay it. But if they don’t fix the initial violation of Cleveland housing law, the city could ticket them again.   

Property owners can also appeal the ticket if they believe their situation has extenuating circumstances.  

“It provides … an off-ramp to the code enforcement process for those who are diligently trying to comply,” Martin O’Toole said. 

The landlord could also ignore the ticket. But the fine will be tacked onto their property taxes. 

So far this year, the city passed out about 2,800 tickets to landlords for failing to join the rental registry or to get a lead safe certificate. Most of those are unpaid. The city is awaiting payment on about half, while another one in five are late on payment. About 8% of the tickets are late enough that they’ve been added to property tax bills. About one in 10 paid their ticket, while a small percentage appealed.

Rental registration and lead safety: What tickets mean for Cleveland housing 

Ticketing property owners who aren’t on the rental registry will also help in the city’s fight against lead, a toxic metal present in much of the city’s housing, according to the city’s Public Health director, Dr. David Margolius. 

That’s because landlords have to prove to the city that their property is safe from lead in order to get on the rental registry. They must show documentation proving this.

“We’re distributing the civil tickets to folks who are breaking the law to improve compliance so that more and more rental units achieve lead safe certification to reduce lead poisoning in Cleveland,” Margolius wrote in an email. 

Wells, with CLASH, agrees. But he wants to know whether the city plans to do any enforcement specific to the city’s lead safe law.  

This spring, the city passed out a batch of tickets to landlords purely based on their failure to make their home lead safe – not in relation to the rental registry. The city targeted landlords who had already inspected their home for lead and found unsafe levels there, Martin O’Toole said.  

“It was like, people who had submitted perhaps failing exams and never come back with anything else, right?” she said. 

Burkons said several landlords who were ticketed feel frustrated, though, because they’ve been trying to comply with the city’s new rules. They’ve submitted a lead inspection to the city of Cleveland, Burkons said. They just need the city to hand over the official lead safe certification in return.  

“I’m hearing from landlords who did the exam, it’s been sitting on B&H’s [Department of Building and Housing] desk for years, and they still got ticketed,” he added.  

Burkons himself has tussled with the city in the past over its lead program, criticizing administrators for slow progress on making homes lead safe. He was formerly a lead risk assessor, a person certified to inspect homes for lead hazards. Burkons lost his license last year after the state health department found he improperly submitted paperwork in several instances that showed rentals didn’t have lead hazards. The City of Cleveland made the complaint. Burkons said it was “ginned up” in retaliation for his outspoken criticism of its program.