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Board of Aldermen Page 22
June 14, 2016

Alderman Siegel

| am going to go through a variety of comments that hopefully address some of the objections that were
made in public comment and deal with a little bit of the history with this and how we got here and correct
some very, very clear misconceptions about this legislation because | think certain people may have
literally read the wrong copy of the legislation, that’s all | can ascertain. There are communications on
your desk from Attorney Nicosia and myself. The attorney is stating that he asked for a continuance of
this legislation. This is not a court of law and you can see from my reply that | did not deny that nor did
President McCarthy as that is not how this Board operates. When legislation is referred to the full Board
it is strictly the power of the full Board, as a legislation body, to decide what to do. Should we, as a
legislation body, eventually vote to table this or do something else or kill it entirely, that is wnat we shall
do. It is not up to me or Alderman McCarthy, and in fact, that would be improper as we operate as a
legislation body so | don’t understand how that was even stated. | also want to say that the landlords
were very much included in this process and | will explain why that is exactly the case. This legislation
was originally referred to the Personnel/Administrative Affairs Committee so for those that were objecting
to how it ended up in the other committee it originally went there and was then sent back up to the full
Board of Aldermen and re-referred back to the Substandard Living Conditions Committee. The reason
was very specific, it was because a lot of the testimony associated with code enforcement and the
discussion about the tool kit for code enforcement, which by the way, had little or nothing to do with the
Country Barn discussion, occurred in that committee and it was felt that there would be a sufficient level
of expertise in that committee to have a meaningful discussion to forward the agenda of making the
legislation appropriate for all parties concerned. It was the will of the full Board of Aldermen to refer and
it was referred and committee meetings were held. There were two committee meetings held and when |
say the landlords were included in the committee meetings, let me be specific, Attorney Peter Nicosia
who represented the landlords was explicitly included in the discussions, he came into the horseshoe
and was a full participant in all of our discussions. That, by the way, as everyone on the Board knows, is
at the discretion of the committee chair and is not a requirement. We could have just said | am sorry but
you have sit there and make your public comment and then be done with it. As the committee chairman |
felt that was not forwarding anybody’s agenda. The idea was to get as much open discussion as
possible and as the legal representative and the elected spokesperson for the landlords that were in the
audience there was a general consensus that he was the right person to be at the meeting and he was
invited and was a full participant. | might say a very full participant as he had a lot to say. Some of it was
agreed to and some of it was not, that’s what we do in committee and that’s what we do at the full Board
of Aldermen, that’s how we deliberate. This idea that somehow the landlords were not involved in the
discussion to me is a misnomer unless they believe that their paid representative did not, in fact,
represent them. They were represented so that’s a misnomer, I’m sorry. | would also point out that the
landlords that were involved; to my understanding they were meetings at the Nashua Public Library in
which a lot of them discussed this legislation. Ve were not invited, | would have been happy to have
attended. City officials were not invited and I’m sure they would have been happy to attend. Nobody told
us about them and as for the notion of us not informing people about when these meetings would be
held, in fact, e-mails were explicitly sent by our legislative manager to Attorney Nicosia informing him
exactly when the committee was going to be meeting so that as much as possible, his constituents,
which are paying him, would be informed. To the extent that he did not communicate that to them, if that
was what occurred, that is out of our control but we went above and beyond and that was a professional
courtesy that | felt was reasonable. Now, there is a statement in Attorney Nicosia’s memorandum which
you received which states that the legislation was not amended and that this had gone through the
committee process and appeared back at the full Board of Aldermen tonight unchanged. We just voted
to amend the legislation with the golden rod copy in which it had been changed. One of the specific
changes that were made was to put the warning procedure back in to make it explicit, that it’s in there so
instead of there being nothing, which there is now, there is no codification of discretion now, it is exactly
what was asked for which was to address our fears that going forward there may be unreasonable code
enforcement agents in place and that there is nothing in the legislation that talks about discretion. Well,
it's in there. Please refer to the goldenrod copy to page 8 where that is explicitly put in there. My

Board of Aldermen Page 23
June 14, 2016

statement is that the attorney’s that spoke are working off of the wrong copy of the legislation possibly
and | think they are doing a disservice to their constituents, that’s my opinion. | don’t know what actually
happened there but | can only ascertain that from the comments that nothing changed because that’s not
the case. | would also point out that there has been mention of an unreasonable timeframe, ten days or
what not, please refer, again, to the discretion clause in which it specifically talks about a reasonable and
certain timeframe. The reasonable and certain timeframe in committee that we talked about was
explicitly dependent on what the nature of the problem was. If you are doing a roof it is very reasonable
to assume that is going to take quite a long period of time and in fact the way things work is that as long
as there is some due diligence to pursue a remedy for a problem then there is no issue. This ordinance
addresses the instance where code enforcement is notified of a problem and at that point there is a
waiting period where there can be a full remedy and if a phone call is made that this is remedied or the
reporting tenant for example, doesn’t follow-up then code enforcement has no action and nothing
happens. Now we get to the point where there is follow-up and at this point, assuming that people are
reasonable, which is generally the case, and in fact codified, a warning is issued in which they talk about
it. Remember that the warning is only issued in the event that there has been no effort at that point to
correct the problem so we are now at the point where no effort has been made to correct the problem
and we are going to issue a warning and hopefully something will be done, again the timeframe is not
specified in the legislation, this ten days is a mythology and | don’t know where that came from. There is
no hard limit; everyone recognizes that there are different problems that require different timeframes so
that is kind of silly in that sense. You literally have to be a willful violator. As far as the notion of an
Appeals Board, we currently have a code system. There was some reference to all of the different
clauses that were in the legislation, all that is the restatement of the existing code, there are no new
clauses or magic police powers, we just restated what is in the blue book and | might also say that this
ordinance goes beyond the scope of landlords. Not a single restaurant owner has testified that there is
an issue and restaurant owners are covered. Anybody with life/safety issues is covered. This is general
enforcement of ordinances by the code enforcement department. The idea that somehow we are going
after people and this is going to be an additional expense, right now if the city were to be a police state or
to “go after people” our only course of action would be to take people to court. Now, everybody who
owns property most likely is a corporation which means you can’t represent yourself in court and you are
hiring an attorney. That attorney is going to click out at about $250.00 per hour and up and there’s going
to be a retainer fee and that’s a whole heck of a lot of money that’s going to occur. That’s the remedy
right now; go to court so a vindictive city government would go and rototill everybody in court if that’s in
fact the police state tactics that we are talking about. By the way, there is no Board of Appeals right now
so right now we are in a situation where code enforcement exists and there is no Appeals Board that we
have right now and you would go to court. That’s your first step. This is codifying discretion and
providing an intermediate step which you don’t even get to unless you are willfully violating the
ordinances. | rarely get too wrapped up in legislation and | understand there are two sides of an issue
and just for example, the pension fund legislation, it was a hard fought discussion and | felt strongly and
other people had reasonable objections and that’s fair, it didn’t pass. In this case | have actually yet to
hear a reasonable objection. | have heard objections but I’ve heard objections based on the wrong
legislation and | haven't heard anything reasonable associated with the exact legislation in front of us so |
would defer to our city attorney to comment on whether this would be unconstitutional or not and in fact |
would like to ask through the chair if Attorney Bolton might be willing to weigh in on a statement that was
made that somehow this is unconstitutional or there is no due process in here since | am not an attorney
and we have an attorney present.

Attorney Bolton

It was the unanimous opinion of the three lawyers in the city’s legal department that this ordinance would
be constitutional if adopted.

Board of Aldermen Page 24
June 14, 2016

Alderman Clemons

| read Attorney Nicosia’s statement and where it says that there were no changes and | think what he
meant, because | had a conversation with him, is that when this was brought back through committee
and it went to the Substandard Living Conditions Committee, the discussion that was had in the
committee was at lease to me and to several other people that were present, that the ordinance was
going to come back and it was going to look a lot different than what it looks like now. That there was
going to be an appeals process put in there, a mandatory warning was going to be put in there, there
was going to be a clearer definition of what some of the fines were and what some of the definitions in
the ordinance were. | have to say that when | got the initial e-mail with what is now before us, the
amended version, my first reaction was nothing has changed. None of the things that were discussed in
the committee were adopted into the ordinance. The closest thing that came out of that was the
discretionary warning but it’s not a mandatory warning. That language is already codified so it’s not
anything new either. When you hear that terminology that there were no changes and you understand it
from that perspective then yes there were no changes. | had worked with one of the city’s attorneys to
go over how to put in a mandatory warning. | had asked the chairman of the committee to put that on the
agenda and | was denied. | left it at that and | didn’t want to bring it forward here tonight but there is an
alternative out there and the alternative would require a mandatory warning. Why | feel that is important
and why | think that this doesn’t pertain or why there should be a mandatory warning is because right
now we have codified the discretionary warning but there is no fine associated with it. This ordinance
seeks to put in a fine so if we are going to fine someone then we should at least warn them ahead time.
If we don’t have the decency to put that mandatory warning in our ordinances, why bother having any
warning at all, you may as well take out the discretionary warning too and just hope that the code
enforcement officers use some kind of discretion. | am not necessarily against putting in these fines but
it has to be done in a way that gets the community involved, that gets the landlords involved and the
property owners involved and it does it in a way that everybody can come out and say that | am satisfied
with the outcome of this because | compromised here or there. We do not have that in front of us
tonight. What we have in front of us is an ordinance that isn’t going to change anything with either of the
two properties that are of concern to us. What are we going to do when we go to Temple Street and
there are bedbugs? We have already been told tonight by the Mayor that when we go there they fix the
problem. | suppose we could fine them but | am sure that they could slap up their rent by another $10.00
per room for a week and cover the fine. It’s not going to solve the problem. They will pay the fine but the
reality is the person that’s going to end up paying the fine is the person that is renting the room. The
same thing with the Country Barn Hotel, this isn’t going to change anything. The only instance that was
given at the Substandard Living Conditions Committee where this might be useful is when the Fire
Marshall has a problem, like the ovens in restaurants that need to be cleaned and right now what they do
is play this game of cat and mouse so maybe in that case a fine would help because the restaurant
owner wouldn’t want to get a fine. To say that this is somehow going to clean up the properties of the
worst offending landlords is incorrect, it’s not going to do anything because you can’t put a law like this
into place and change an immoral person’s behavior. They will say here is the table of fines and | will
multiply that by how many rooms | have and |’m going to increase the rent on everybody, that’s just
reality. What we really should be focusing on here is going back and seeing how this schedule is going
to actually help us. | think there are some ways where it could be useful but in this form and without a
mandatory warning, | cannot and will not support it. | don’t think that it’s fair to say that because I’m
against this or if somebody votes no that they don’t care about the bad properties in this city. In fact, |
think that by voting no on this and maybe tabling it and bringing it back to committee, | think that’s going
to show those property owners that maybe we should retool this so that we can come up with something
that really is going to go after them and really is going to solve the problem because this isn’t going to do
it.

Alderman LeBrun

| feel compelled to explain my no vote on this. | either misplaced or | do not have the amendment and
therefore | felt compelled to vote on something that | had no knowledge of.

Board of Aldermen Page 25
June 14, 2016

Alderman Moriarty

We did listen last time and | want to take credit publicly for at least doing that even though our lovely
local newspaper editorial attacked us. | am still on the fence on this, | could be persuaded either way but
| wanted to mention one thing in support and that is that everybody knows that | am sort of a liberty
minded person and I’m very small government and my instincts have always been from the beginning to
vote no because | think we ought to keep restrictions on the government. Once you offer the
government a power it’s very hard to take it away so | am very cautious when it comes to giving them
power. The best analogy | would use in this case would be the police department. The laws are written
to give them the ability to give someone a fine for speeding and I’ve had the police department do traffic
enforcement on Searles in Ward 9 and they will report back how many citations they gave and how many
warnings they gave. We live life already in Nashua benefitting from the intelligent thought of our elected
officials and our employees, specifically the police department who know when to give a warning. The
Mayor has already said that our code enforcement are good people and they are going to use good
judgement and | believe that if we were to pass this that all of the good landlords our of city are not going
to suddenly get piled under with fines and that the code enforcement is going to know just like the police
department does when to give a warning

Alderman Siegel

First to address my colleague, Alderman LeBrun’s concern, the amended version was attached to the
agenda provided at the meeting so that’s with you. If you looked at the legislation that is under O-16-003
on the website, that was not the legislation that is attached to the agenda. It’s very important to be
discussing the legislation we are voting on with the additions of the discretionary warnings. | want to
address this issue of the mandatory warnings which we had extensive discussions within committee and
in fact, after the first meeting in which this was brought up which generally everybody regarded as a very
cordial discussion, it was, we took all of the input and went back and said okay, what does this actually
mean in practice, is this going to work and if it’s fine we will put in there. There was no knee/jerk reaction
to say | don’t care what anybody says we are not going to put it in, in fact, the leaning went the other way
around. It was to say unless there is a reason to keep this out we will put it in so why was mandatory
warnings not put in? Let’s keep in mind this is not just a landlord/tenant ordinance, this is code
enforcement and Bill McKinney who is our building inspector gave the very specific example, a real life
example, of contractors that are effectively serial violators. They will come in on a job site and do
something completely out of code and completely illegal. If a mandatory warning were issued or required
then from job site to job site and they would go without any consequence whatsoever. With a
discretionary warning most contractors, as you can imagine, are completely legitimate so you give them
a warning they will say I’m sorry and the job there is no issue, that’s not a problem. But with that
mandatory warning it becomes something just literally that you can institutionalize (inaudible) and less
face it, somebody that is willfully violating is an unethical person. Nothing in the existing codes is
anything more than codified common sense and in fact, many times life/safety issues. The idea that we
would mandate a procedure which would specifically allow behavior which is negative is not okay and
that’s why it’s not in there. Now, to address this whole police state issue which may be overhanging that
was mentioned and | know it was not a specific topic but there is a need for government oversight. |
mean could you imagine a situation where we viewed our health department as a police state because
we came to a restaurant and the refrigerators were temped out at 65 degrees and food was in there and
we said do you know what, we will not empower code enforcement to do anything, we are going to have
a mandatory warning, which by the way, would refer to all code enforcements. So spoiled meat, no
problem just let it go. Again that’s an extreme example, it’s not something that is going to happen but
this idea that there is a police state and that we empowered us with new powers, we haven’t done
anything, the codes are the codes, it’s just here is an intermediate step other than going to court, again,
the police state would just be rototilling everybody and taking everybody to court. This does not do that.

Board of Aldermen Page 26
June 14, 2016

Alderman Lopez

| attended both of the Substandard Living Conditions Committee meetings and | would like to reiterate
that | felt it was as inclusive as we could make it. The chair, Alderman Siegel, invited the landlords who
were present to sit in the horseshoe and discuss things or to elect a representative to represent them.
They chose Attorney Nicosia. Attorney Nicosia had already given us his memo and he chose to use his
time to go over that in detail with all of our city staff. There was no Attorney Nicosia said that and our
staff thought about it and said oh, you are right. It was more that Attorney Nicosia said this and our staff
said well that’s already happening or this is how that is addressed right now or this is why that wouldn't
be a good idea. The back and forth was more because our staff was basically explaining to Attorney
Nicosia how it worked. | never got any impression at all that there was any intention to sit down in yet
another separate subcommittee group that is somehow not part of the Substandard Living Conditions
Committee and work something out. That was an idea that Attorney Nicosia came up with and then just
kept repeating it over and over again to the point where he expressed disappointment that we had not
decided to it. No one any point said that would be a good idea and we are going to need three over here
and three over there. That was never really on the table. The Substandard Living Conditions Committee
would have been a great time for landlords to directly weigh in instead of hiring a lawyer and trusting that
lawyer to represent your interests for you. On that not | would want to say that regardless of what
happens tonight when you come the Substandard Living Conditions Committee, if you are invited to
speak or you have public comment, use your right and don’t just hire somebody to just speak for you and
hope they get it done because it seems like that’s not really what happened here. Again, we got another
note from Attorney Nicosia which is really just summarizing everything we have already heard several
times now. Another representative of his firm came and read through what we have already received so
we haven't really had input per se, directly from landlords that’s different from what the person that they
paid to represent them has said so far. | think we have been as inclusive as possible but we are not
really getting willingness to compromise. The people who aren't in this room will never show up in this
room. The people who are actually victims of substandard living conditions who are living in the
economic bracket that don’t have any other choices and have to put up with whatever housing they can
get are not going to come into a room full of landlords, like half of the landlords in the city and start
complaining about code violations because they are going to be afraid nobody is going to rent to them so
we are not hearing from everybody directly because when we did have people come in and testify
suddenly they were getting eviction notices and suddenly things were happening that were intimidating to
them. | can understand what those people are going through and | am keeping in mind that | represent
them too, at least in Ward 4, | have the largest population of people who are living in rooming houses
and single occupancy units and | think it’s important for their voices to be heard here too. We have
heard from places like the Nashua Housing Authority and NeighborWorks which work with those
populations and are the closest thing to a direct voice that those people have and they agreed that this is
a good step to take and this is something that we should do. | also asked the city’s department staff if it
would make a difference and if it would help them deal with people you would normally have to court.
They said yes, Sarah Marchant said that this would actually help them if they had to go to court in
creating a documentation chain. The other staff gave examples of how it would help them in their
particularly fields. Our staff says yes and they believe that this will make a difference and improve the
ability to enforce code in the city.

Alderman Clemons

With all due respect to Alderman Lopez, | think that in some cases there could be instances where this
might be effective for a landlord, maybe. But it’s basically just adding a layer to an already cumbersome
process. | too, live in a Ward that has a lot of rental units, Ward 6; in fact my house on Ash Street is the
only single-family house surrounded by rental properties. The landlords there do a very good job of
upkeep of the homes. The thing that | want to be sure about is that we are not passing something that in
the future will give the city the right to automatically come in and penalize people just because that’s
what they want to do or they want to set a new precedent. I’ve seen stuff like that happen before in the

Board of Aldermen Page 27
June 14, 2016

private sector and it’s because basically it’s allowed. If you allow it then chances are that at some point
down the road somebody is going to do it. It doesn’t mean that it will happen tomorrow or in twenty years
but if we are having an issue where we are having a lot of issues with landlords for whatever reason,
rather than give warnings we want to change the policy to just fine people automatically. Nothing in this
ordinance prevents that from happening. Nothing in this ordinance gives that landlord an opportunity to
state their case and not pay the fine other than going to court and as we’ve said earlier tonight, that’s an
expensive process. | don’t think that this ordinance is ready for prime time. | think that there are other
things that we need to do as a city to go after the big offenders. This is not going to have any impact,
other than raising the rent on the poorest of individuals in this city and it won’t do anything else other
than that and | guarantee you that the rents will rise if we pass this, they will because they are going to
build it in because their business model is not a business model of renting rooms, nice rooms to people
so that they have a safe place to live; the business model of our worst offenders is to collect the money
and hope that the city doesn’t come in and hope that the people that we are renting to don’t come and
complain to code enforcement. That’s what immoral people do.

Alderman Wilshire

Landlords can increase their rents, and they are going to have vacancies if they do so. This is not going
to affect 99 percent of the landlords in this city. It’s that other one percent that this is going to affect. We
need to pass this ordinance to start making change here in the city. | agree with everything Alderman
Siegel has said and everything Alderman Lopez has said. It’s time we, as a city, start making some
changes so the housing quality in this city improves. I’m going to support this.

Alderman Lopez

| just want to point out that if rents raise, that would be the deliberate decision on the part of landlords,
regardless of whether they are being affected or not. Rents have been raising; rents are going to
continue to rise. If a landlord in this room decides, I’m upset the city did this. I’m going to pump my rent
up, that’s one way of looking at it. The landlords that are being specifically addressed by this legislation
it is not intended to impact every person in the City of Nashua. It is intended to directly impact the people
who are being non-responsive to the city’s attempts at code enforcement. They’re the ones who seem to
have set the bar as low as possible for rent. I’m not sure they are going to start to try to compete with
other landlords and other businesses to try to get back at us or try to improve their conditions because as
soon as that happens, anybody who could afford their rental properties is probably going to pick
someone else. | don’t think necessarily rent is automatically going to be raised across the board. | do
know that you made a good point that if we allow something to happen, it probably will happen. My issue
with this is it is happening right now. We can talk about what could happen or what might happen with
the assumption for some reason by the way that every future board of aldermen is going to be
completely negligent of this issue and they are not going to respond to constituent complaints; if a
landlord is being mistreated, nobody is going to do anything. If that happens, that’s a day that hasn't
happened yet. What is happening right now is there are landlords that are doing this that need to be
addressed. It’s not even really just 23 Temple Street. There are other landlords that aren’t as frequent
or as ridiculous offender but we heard public comment in the last meeting about issues at 243 Main
Street that should probably be looked at too. There are other substandard living condition locations. |
think if we pass this ordinance, it creates a disincentive for people to continue doing business that way
because it changes the dynamic of what they can get away with and what they can't.

Alderman Moriarty

| was going to make a motion to re-refer, but I’ve decided not to. I'll let somebody else make that motion.
| heard what Alderman Clemons had to say, and I'll just let him have that opportunity if he wants to.
Thank you.

Board of Aldermen Page 28
June 14, 2016

Alderman Clemons

l’ll be brief; | know it’s getting late. When you’re renting to people who basically are the poorest people in
Nashua, maybe a step above being homeless, living in 23 Temple Street or the Country Barn Motel or
wherever else there’s issues like that, if you raise their rent by $15 or $20 a week, they can go
somewhere else. They can walk to the woods. There is no other place. All you are doing is taking
money out of their pocket. | guarantee you that the business moral of these places are slumlords. This
isn’t going to change that. This will not change that. All this is going to do is raise rents on the people
that can’t’ afford it the most. It’s going to do nothing. | agree, 99 percent, probably all of these people,
it's not going to affect them at all, one way or the other. At least not right now, but it could. But it’s that
potential where it could that | have a problem with. You shouldn’t’ pass legislation that could be
menacing in the future. I’m just going to leave it at that.

Alderman Dowd

| am going to disagree with the Alderman that just spoke on several points. One, they are not going to
raise their rents to pay fines because if they don’t’ correct the faults, the fines are going to increase to the
point where it’s going to hurt them. It has nothing to do with rents because those fines will far exceed
rents. I’ve talked to several of the department heads. For years, their hands have been tied trying to
enforce things. They’ve said if the landlords are known for taking care of these things on a timely basis
or tell them that it’s going to take me three weeks to get a contractor, they are not going to have an issue
with that. They are after the repeat offenders. The ones that time after time just ignore the code
enforcement. As far as the mandatory warnings, | equate that to having a police car at Exit 5 stopping
cars and saying if you don’t’ slow down, there’s a cruiser at Exit 6 and he is going to pull you over and
give you a ticket. You would have to be pretty stupid to go speeding by Exit 6 because you are going to
get a ticket. That’s what mandatory warnings are, the same thing. | trust that our employees, especially
working under the department heads and the mayor that we have, are not going to abuse this. Is this a
perfect ordinance? No. It’s very difficult to write perfect ordinances. We can address it over time and
see if there are tweaks that need to be made. But we need to do something now, not later. This has
been back and forth to committees on several occasions. It has had several screenings, several
opportunities. The legislation that is before us right now is what we have. Let’s give it a shot and make
sure that the intent of this ordinance is followed. The mayor and the department heads will do that. If we
get feedback from the landlords that it is being abused, we can change it right here again.

Alderman McGuinness

| think as most of you know, | won’t be supporting this legislation. But! did want to mention with respect
to the sponsors and the supporters of it, that their hearts are in the right place. They're sincere and
genuine in what they are trying to do to solve a problem. | don’t like this legislation. | think it is poorly
written and could be very harmful to the citizens that are property owners of Nashua. | do understand we
are trying to solve a problem here. The proponents of the legislation, your intentions are good, but | just
think it’s really a flawed bill. One thing | would like to say about intentions, we’ve heard a lot of
testimony from some of the department heads about how they are going to practice good will and
restraint and good intentions. I’d just like to remind everybody that this is legislation and we’re
legislators. | think good intentions are meaningless. The road to somewhere is filled with them. | think
that some of the testimony that was brought up, it’s black and white. We're making law here. We're not
talking about good intentions and friendly administrations and unfriendly administrations. | just wanted to
set that there. Thank you for listening; | will not be supporting this bill.

Alderman Wilshire

| think one of the things that really are important to me is people like NeighborWorks came out to speak
in favor of this legislation. They provide housing for low income individuals, and they are good at it. They

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June 14, 2016

are very good at it. They have a lot of low income apartments, not just in Nashua but in southern New
Hampshire. | am very respectful of the work they do. They came tonight to make sure that we knew that
they were in support of this type of legislation, as did one of the commissioners from the Nashua Housing
Authority, who is probably the biggest landlord in the City of Nashua. We also got a communication from
Bob Keating, who we all know in this Chamber, who is one of the strongest advocates for low income
people. He’s with the Granite State Organizing Project, and he was in support of this. That’s pretty
telling to me, that these organizations and individuals came here to talk to us about this tonight. This is
what these people do. They advocate for low income people. They came tonight to tell us that. I'll be
supporting it.

Alderman Schoneman

| appreciate the advocacy for low income tenants in the City of Nashua and elsewhere. The gentleman
who spoke from NeighborWorks and others who would speak in favor sounds like they are good
landlords.

(Alderman Moriarty was disconnected and no longer participated via teleconference call.)

There’s no issue with their compliance or their provision of good services. Landlords at the two locations
that we are really concerned with don’t appear to be in that category. | share the view that | don’t think
we’re going to change their character. The gentleman that spoke from NeighborWorks seemed to exhibit
a character where he had legitimate and genuine concern. The landlords or the owners at the two
places that we are primarily concerned with, | don’t know if they are going to be legitimately affected by
this. If they don’t have that character already, | don’t see it happening. | think the likelinood of them
raising rent just from an economic standpoint based on the low vacancy rate that we heard from the
gentleman from NeighborWorks at 2 percent, there appears to be no pressure to keep rates low. If he
was able to raise them to collect the fines, maybe they could simply do that from an economic
standpoint. Maybe that’s the answer in a sense because if everything is complied with internally to that
building at 23 Temple, there could still be issues with those folks across the street that wanted to develop
the property but didn’t because 23 Temple exists as it is. This isn’t going to change what 23 Temple is.
I’m concerned about that. I’m also wanted to address the comment that there’s no effect on those sitting
out here. There may be no fine coming in the next week or two or whenever, but there is an effect.
That’s what they are here speaking about. One gentleman said he had anxiety. As a landlord he owns
one building and he expressed a fear of what this might mean for him. | think that’s a serious concern. |
don’t like it when any citizen in the city is afraid of this government. | think the folks at 23 Temple, the
owners of 23 Temple should be afraid, but | don’t think they are. The legitimate people who are good
landlords, they are the ones that are fearful. Whether or not this will affect them today is hard to say, but
it could. It could affect them a year from now or two years from now or whenever when this legislation
lies there ready to be picked up and enforced perhaps punitively. Who knows, we don’t know that now.
We know the character of the people that are administering it today within code enforcement. We don’t
know beyond that. It seems to me that it opens a door that | think causes potential grief in the future,
certainly causes a level of anxiety and fear today. | question what real effect it will have on the two
properties we’re concerned with. Thank you.

Alderman Lopez

| want to say | am sensitive to the anxiety that a business owner feels really. | understand what it’s like to
be concerned about the future and what it might hold. | am also sensitive to the first woman who testified
here. Her son died in the room next door. She received an eviction notice the day before Thanksgiving.
No organizations or help was going to be available for her to get anything. She was very anxious. She
was very upset. Her son’s room was rented out the day after. The discussion about when it was being
rented out was happening right in front of her while this is all happening. His belongings were kept in a
closet that someone else was renting out, so she couldn’t even get her son’s stuff. This is not behavior

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June 14, 2016

the city should tolerate. | hate to say this, but it’s not the only time it’s happened. If more people came
and testified to the substandard living conditions and talked about the conditions that they endure in the
landlords that we’re talking about, just one or two buildings, if we talk about the human misery that they
cause, | think most of the people in this room would be completely appalled because it is a different level
of living that they are anywhere used to living. That’s why it is substandard living. People feel anxiety.
They feel depression. They feel hopelessness. They can’t move out. They can’t make any changes.
The physical building that they are living in is not basic living conditions. It’s something that needs to be
done now. I’m very sensitive to the position that this is putting landlords in because this is change. This
is a new effort by the city, and yes, we should all be very anxious about how it could go unintended and
how it could go poorly, but | think that anxiety has driven the development of it in the first place. | think
everybody who has looked at this has taken a conscientious approach at it, and said | want to make sure
we don’t do this wrong. | even understand Alderman Clemons’ approach because he is trying to make
sure that this does what it is supposed to do. Everybody in the room is very, very conscience of how this
could go wrong. | just want to remind everybody that it is going wrong for people right now. We’re all still
going to be in this room next month, the month after, maybe a year and a half from now, who knows.
We're going to be available. If something is going wrong, we can do something about it. We're all open.
You all know now which one of us is your ward alderman, which one of us is your at-large. | am very
much in favor of maintaining the communication that we’ve started here regardless of how the vote goes
because | think that’s the best way to cooperatively move forward with this. | don’t think this legislation is
going to be the solution to every problem, but | think it is start that we need to make. It’s a stepping point
to move forward collectively in trying to address a real issue with the city that most of us aren’t directly
affected by. It’s just hypothetical, but it’s happening and there are people that need to be spoken for.

Alderman Clemons

Mr. President, to Alderman Lopez, if | could. Could you explain how this legislation is going to help
somebody who is sleeping in a bedbug infested bed tonight?

Alderman Lopez

As was already described by the staff at both of the meetings of the substandard living conditions
committees, it provides a disincentive to just carrying on business as usual. As the Mayor said at the
beginning of this meeting, a lot of code violations that are happening in specific buildings, they are not
being reviewed in advance because there is no consequence. If the code enforcement officer comes
and says fix this then they have to fix it. If the code enforcement officer says this is broken, you have to
fix it or there’s a fine, now they only have ten days to fix it. The concern that is being voiced by the other
landlords here becomes a driving factor. It’s also a documentation trail so if the landlord is a repeat
offender and is constantly causing difficulty, now at least we have something that we can bring to court.
A lot of this was covered in the meetings that you were sitting at. Maybe reviewing the minutes would be
helpful.

Alderman Clemons

If | could continue, respectfully, | guess | just don’t understand how a fine is going to clean up a building
that we haven’t been able to clean up for 30 years.

Alderman Lopez
Is that a question?
Alderman Clemons

It’s not a question; it’s a statement.

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June 14, 2016

Alderman Siegel

First of all, let's remember this is code enforcement. It does not deal with just 23 Temple. We get
sucked into this rabbit hole of using 23 Temple as the litmus test for this legislation. It is not intended to
be such. It is more wide ranging than that. | gave the specific example of improper contractor actions,
which is the specific thing which led to us not wanting to put the mandatory warnings in there. Yes,
dealing with 23 Temple would be highly desirable. This legislation is not exclusive to that nor should it be
judged exclusively on its success or failures in dealing with 23 Temple. With regard to people walking
out and sleeping in the woods, the people that are in those situations have housing vouchers. Those
housing vouchers don’t go away depending on whether somebody raises the rent. The housing
vouchers are to provide for those people so we don’t have people walking in the woods. By the way, one
of those people that would be walking in the woods is the previously mentioned Kathy Tucker. | was the
person sitting there with her the morning her son died. | was the guy whose shoulder she was crying on
trying to help her from being evicted on the morning that her son died. Even that said this legislation is
not influenced by that. That’s a very bad situation. But this legislation is not part of some social justice
warrior attempt at dealing with it although that is clearly something we care about. That’s not what this
legislation is about. It’s wide ranging. It’s code enforcement, not landlord-tenant issues.

Alderman LeBrun

Mr. President, would a motion to re-refer to the committee be in order at this time?
President McCarthy

Yes, it would. Are you making one?

Alderman LeBrun

So moved.

MOTION BY ALDERMAN LEBRUN TO RE-REFER TO COMMITTEE

ON THE QUESTION

President McCarthy

Discussion which is limited to the expedience of re-referring to committee.

Alderman Siegel

Which | assume it would be re-referred to my committee, | see nothing further to be gained by re-
referring to committee. We've exhaustively discussed this. | think if it's going to pass or fail, | think it
should do so on the merits as it is presented right now. Some may object; others may not. We've had a
lot of discussion. | would like to see this voted on now. | adamantly object to re-referring it to committee.

Alderman O’Brien

As a member of the committee and clerk, | would like to reiterate exactly what Alderman Siegel has said.
| don’t see any other future work to can come. This needs to go to a vote tonight.