Posted on 10/05/2009 3:33:01 AM PDT by Man50D
A Pennsylvania man who refuses to allow city officials to enter his home without a warrant has been forced out to stay in a hotel instead, evicted by a notice posted on his door that forbids him from using or occupying the building he owns.
Borough Ordinance No. 1188 of Lansdowne, Penn., requires all rental properties – including the private residence of the landlord, if he lives onsite – be subjected to annual inspections, with or without a warrant.
But Michael Marcavage, who lives in half of a Lansdowne duplex he owns, renting out the other half, believes the city knocking on the door and demanding warrantless entrance and inspection of his private residence – just because it also happens to be part of a rental building – is a violation of the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment.
The Fourth Amendment states in part, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause."
Marcavage has not been accused of any wrongdoing, nor has any warrant been sought to inspect his property. In fact, he's been fighting the borough's rental inspection ordinance as unconstitutional for years, both for himself and his tenants. He's even been issued a citation and fine in the past for refusing to permit warrantless search of his home.
But earlier this week, the borough stepped up the battle.
Two days ago, city code officials posted a notice on Marcavage's door informing him his house was deemed an "unlawful rental property" and allowing him to the end of that same day to obtain his rental license or get out.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
Hello, ACLU, hello? Tap...tap...tap???
City officials need to be held accountable for all the costs of violating this man’s constitutional rights.
In addition they should be forced to take a class on the constitution and not allowed to hold any public office or job until they can prove competence in the constitution.
I wonder who he voted for on November 4, 2008.
And make fine sand out of big rocks for 5 years, free housing at Ft. Levenworth, Kansas.
Code enforcement officials are the most obnoxious, abusive S.O.B.’s on the planet. I wonder how many municipalities or other political entities have come up with the scheme to require a “license” to rent property?
Was the 4th incorporated?
“Code enforcement officials are the most obnoxious, abusive S.O.B.’s on the planet.”
true.
Storm Troopers, Brown Shirts, they are the “hardening edge” of the soft tyranny.
Not only are code officials obnoxious but they really don’t know the code.
After several instances where we built things to what the code official required (at great expense) we finally bought a set of code books and started reading them and using them in our projects.
In about a dozen instances when told something had to be done a certain way we drug out the books and pointed out the errors of the code officials ways. Of course we then had many more inspections, but were never questioned again (we were prepared to go to court).
In many cases building codes are not properly interpreted. There is no recourse for the wronged party though. We figure we spent about 30K on things to “meet code” that were not required.
I wonder if I know why some of this was happening. They passed a similar inspection thing here in Williamsport PA due to drugs. There have been a lot of landlords allowing their rental properties to have a gazillion people living in them while ignoring all kinds of drug activity. Not saying I agree with this,, just saying that has what has happened here.
If he's that principled in terms of the Constitution, he probably voted for Obama. Because, you see, he could never have voted for that RINO McCain.
I wonder how many municipalities or other political entities have come up with the scheme to require a “license” to rent property?
Buffalo New York comes to mind. My sister-in-law, who owned her own single family house, was sent a notice by the City to pay a landlord license. She complained and was told that in 1995 the house had been rented out and was now (and forever) listed as rental property. She fought them for 3 years and they responded with a new list of items to fix every 3 or 4 months (new paint job because of a 3”x3” area that was peeling), rat proofing, new gutters, inadequate security door, railing on front steps did not meet code, etc., etc.) The worst was the order to paint the house within 30 days (in November, and it was 35-40 degrees outside). She finally sold the house and moved to the suberbs this summer.
Eschew JUANnabies.
There is no way he voted Democrat. Property rights and Democrats never go together.
How would the election of McCain have prevented this?
No way he voted for Obama. No way. Most likely voted for 3rd party or possibly hoodwinked into voting for McCain.
Watch out for ADA code violations, many inspectors and code officials skim over them.
There’s an individual who is a self-appointed ADA watchdog in my area that shuts down businesses that don’t meet Fed/State codes AFTER a building has passed inspections and they are up and running.
It’s devastating.
They do when it's their property...
I worked for a company that moved office furniture several years ago.
We were doing work for a large company that was opening a branch office in a suburb of Minneapolis.
We wound up rearranging the cubicle farm three times, due to “not meeting” fire codes, even though each time, it was done in accordance to code.
The regional VP of the business we were doing the work for was there during the final move. She said she was going to make sure her company never did business in this particular suburb again.
She was furious at the extra expense incurred due to what was nothing more than the whim of local inspectors.
All these problems with building inspectors! My Dad just used to leave a bottle or two of Jim Beam in an obvious place. He bought cases of the stuff. Or just plain cold cash.
The guy needs to evict his tenant and go straight residential- then sell and go somewhere else, they have his number and will harass him forever.
Or start a homebased nonprofit “foundation” and make his property its headquarters- like Rahm Emmanuel does with his house in Chicago. Voila, no property tax.
I’d contribute to his defense fund.
in a case like that, probable cause exists to acquire a warrant.
we have this scheme in my town
“You wanna act like Nazi bureaucrats and keep me out of my own home?”
“Be prepared to be treated like Nazi bureacrats, as I am sleeping in my own bed tonight!”
re: Ordinance No. 1188 of Lansdowne, Penn., requires all rental properties – including the private residence of the landlord, if he lives onsite – be subjected to annual inspections, ...........
How is his private residence in which he lives a rental property?
Its time we the people DEMAND that our Constitution is the law of the land. Either it stands as that or its just a piece of paper with ink on it. It up to us to defend or allow it to wither and die.
The story is more interesting that the article suggest. I moved out of Lansdowne because of this issue. Lansdowne was a republican controlled town about a mile west of Philadelphia with beautiful Victorian houses on tree lined streets made it a nice place to live. It was only about 20 minute-drive to Center City Philadelphia. In the 1950’s many of the big houses were divided into three apartment houses with most of the owners living in one of the apartments. In the 1930’s a professor was experimenting with radium. The by-products were sold and hundreds of houses in the Delaware Valley were built with radio active materials. EPA came in more than 10 years ago and, with superfund, condemned the houses and built new houses. The Republican Boss Hogs knew the houses were going to be rebuilt so they bought the, abandoned, radio active houses for pennies on the dollar. It was a big scandal when it was revealed what happened, the republicans were not reelected.
The reason for the ordinance was that Lansdowne also was a ‘white’ town on the edge of ‘black’ West Philadelphia. I did not detect any problems when the black people started moving in but, the crime rate went up. The Democrat controlled, Borough counsel determined that black people who bought houses were not problems but black people who rented were causing crime. They could not say that black people could not rent in Lansdowne so they actively discouraged all rental activity. They gave homeowners money to convert their houses back into single family houses. They created the regulations to charge $60/per year fee for each apartment (even if it was not rented) and a yearly inspection regime. The first year, in my house, the inspector found a number of defects that I needed to fix. Some of them were valid and a few were silly. I made the ‘repairs’. The next year the inspector gave me a list of ‘defects’ that needed to get fixed. I did not correct any of the ‘defects’. The next year they gave me an other list of ‘defects’ but strange enough, none of the ‘defects’ from the previous year, that were not corrected, were on the new list. I began to get suspicious. I asked the inspector, what was going on. He told me the whole story about the property values and how they relate to black people. One of my tenants was black and I did not see any problems so, I decided to get out of that municipality. That is exactly what I did.
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