DRUG ACTIVITY AT RENTAL HOUSE PROMPTS CITY COUNCIL TO PUT LANDLORD ON NOTICE

For the first time, the Greenville City Council has voted to exercise
authority provided by the state Legislature to force a landlord to curb
drug activity at one of his properties.

In 1995, the Legislature gave municipalities the ability to ask for court
action against landowners who maintain property for drug-related activity,
or who fail to prevent that activity. Council members voted unanimously on
Sept. 13 to instruct city attorneys to initiate that legal process.

At the center of the action is a rental house at 1402 Chestnut St., where
city officials say they have asked the property owner, James Baldwin, to
evict tenant James Matthews.

Matthews has been involved in two of the seven drug arrests at the house in
the past two years, police say. Baldwin has not moved to evict Matthews or
to run background checks on prospective tenants, both of which he agreed in
July to do.

"It appears Mr. Baldwin is making no effort to stop the drug activity on
his property," Police Chief Joe Simonowich wrote in a memorandum to City
Manager Marvin Davis. "This property is a nuisance to the neighborhood and
an immediate threat to the public safety of the area."

Police attorney Blair Carr said she will file an action in Pitt County
Superior Court asking a judge to enjoin Baldwin from allowing any further
drug-related activity on the premises.

If he refuses to make a good-faith effort in that regard, he can be found
in contempt of court and subjected to fines, including the cost of the
city's efforts to deal with him, Carr said.

The court can force Baldwin to evict the tenant, or, ultimately, seize the
house, she said.

"This guy's got a loaded gun, and he refuses to disarm it," she said of
Baldwin.

Carr stresses that the city has worked with Baldwin - as it has,
successfully, with other landlords - to find ways to eliminate the criminal
behavior, including help evicting the tenant.

"I give them tools that they can use to help," but Baldwin hasn't met the
city even halfway, she said.

"That's not the kind of landlord we need," Carr said.

Though forfeiture of the house is the ultimate remedy, "the city does not
want to take any landowner's property," she said.

Through the court action, officials "are putting the landowners on notice
that you must be good stewards of the property," Carr said.