2 CITIES: METHODS DIFFER WITH SAME RESULTS

The Missouri cities of Springfield and Kirkwood share the same property maintenance code. But enforcement of the code in those cities, with their vastly different dynamics and demographics, reflects varying degrees of government supervision.

Springfield, a growing college town in Southwest Missouri there are six campuses and a population of about 150,000 enforces its maintenance code on a complaint basis.

But Kirkwood, an inner-tier St. Louis suburb of 30,000 people with little room for growth, has for the past 25 years enforced its code with inspections of properties every time there's a change in occupancy.

And officials in both cities say the code's been effective indicating that property maintenance code enforcement can be molded to suit a particular city.

In Cape Girardeau, city officials and citizens groups have recommended the city council adopt a minimum property maintenance code to be enforced on a complaint basis.

Officials in many St. Louis suburbs contend such a code will never work. Some say it invites legal hassles because inspectors are restricted from entering properties without permission or a court order. Others say complaint-based enforcement fails to reach many dilapidated properties. All agree that it embroils the city in landlord-tenant disputes.

But officials and property owners in cities that have adopted complaint-based enforcement say far-reaching and intrusive "occupancy permit" and mandatory rental licensing programs incite the wrath of landlords. They also say such a program requires vast budget resources to fund a large bureaucracy of code inspectors and added demands on municipal court.

Gareld "Borgie" Borgstadt, director of the building regulations department at Springfield, said it's not feasible in that city to have mandatory property inspections.

Borgstadt said that self-interest, as much as the threat of city code enforcement, compels most property owners and landlords to maintain their buildings.

"Most property owners are more than willing to take on the responsibilities to bring their property up to code and maintain them so that it's a positive asset for them," he said. "Those individuals that let properties decline, eventually it gets to point where they have to spend a great deal more money to make the repairs.

"In other words, it's certainly to their advantage to keep properties up to code."

A.R. Wilson manages about 200 rental units in Springfield. He said most property managers have no objections to keeping their rental property up to code.

He said he would fight any proposal to go to mandatory inspection, particularly if rental properties were singled out.

"If they're not going to do it for a homeowner the same as they do on a rental property, I'd fight it," Wilson said.

But he said there are problems with complaint-based enforcement as well.

"The thing that aggravates me is there are some substandard properties owned by landlords that never get inspected," Wilson said. "That's what gets a lot of us really miffed, especially when we might have property in the same area.

"It's degrading to our property when there are neighboring units that are run-down," he added. "But if there's no complaint, they're not going to enforce the code there."

Borgstadt said tenants who complain of substandard housing conditions often find themselves evicted by the landlords forced to comply with the code.

Where code enforcement involves mandatory inspections, property owners naturally tend to be more critical.

But as is the case with many government programs, the longer such a program exists, the more apt those affected by it are to numbly bear its enforcement.

Ace Miller, code enforcement officer in Kirkwood, said the occupancy permit program there was started in the 1960s.

Miller said the program has successfully guaranteed the preservation of the city's housing stock while increasing housing values. "It's definitely done the job," he said.

Like other St. Louis suburbs, Kirkwood was in the path of the outward migration from St. Louis during the 1960s, Miller said.

"The suburbs on the outer edge of the city were the ones that started to depreciate," he said. "At the time, the city council decided they just did not want the problems that a lot of the inner-core suburbs have.

"They had enough foresight to say, `Let's start now.'"

Miller said it would be difficult for any city to embark on an ambitious property maintenance program once a sizable section of housing has become substandard. Such late enforcement would result in abandonment and condemnation of properties, he said.

Miller said code enforcement in Kirkwood is relatively painless because most residents there "take a lot of pride in the community."

If that attitude was universal, he said, there would be little need for a code.