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
