Free Republic

St. Paul may soon pass a social host ordinance that punishes adults who knowingly allow parties, where minors are drinking. That includes adults who aren't even there, including landlords. "They bear some of the responsibility to ensure it doesn't continue," said St. Paul Council Member Russ Stark.

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Mutiny at the Market Crisis Resolved After Grand Central Vendors, Citing the Economy, Withheld Rents by Richard Guzman Numerous merchants in Grand Central Market did not pay their February rents for more than two weeks. As part of a deal with the landlord, many rents will be reduced and a monthly advertising fee eliminated. Photo by Gary Leonard. DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES - A tenants' mutiny at Grand Central Market was resolved last week after a group of merchants who had withheld their February rents came to an agreement with the landlord and paid up. As part of the resolution with...

Editta Sherman has celebrated more than half a century's worth of new years in her palatial studio apartment above New York's Carnegie Hall. But it's unlikely the celebrated portrait photographer will be raising her glass there next year. Known as the Duchess of Carnegie, the 96-year-old came home a few days ago to find an eviction notice on her door. "I thought, oh, what is this? Are you kidding me that they are really going to send a woman like me down the street just like that? Have me scurry away without a fight," she said, delivering a whooping cackle,...

For the first time the office, in addition to imposing fines, is seeking to seize the landlords' properties, using a statute in the state code normally applied to antitrust cases. Authorities allege that the landlords sought to circumvent local renter-protection laws by locking tenants out of their buildings, failing to make timely repairs, making false and misleading representations that the building was being condemned and turning off utilities. At the low-rent Huntington Hotel downtown, electricity and water were turned off for extended periods, according to court documents, and tenants were threatened with violence or the removal of their property unless...

Did you know that in California, child molesters and rapists are a protected class? It's true. Not only are California landlords banned from using the state's Megan's Law database to decline renting their properties to sex offenders, they're not even allowed to warn other tenants that these paroled criminals are now their neighbors. If they do the first, they can be fined $25,000 for housing discrimination. But if they don't do the second, they can be sued for failing to protect tenants against a known danger. Landlords are caught between a rock, a hard place and the California State Assembly's...

CONCORD, N.H. - Six newspapers in New Hampshire have agreed to stop running real estate ads that suggest children aren't welcome at the properties following complaints that the ads violated federal law. Several dozens landlords and real estate agents also agreed to stop placing ads targeting adult tenants and to submit future ads to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for review. Federal law prohibits landlords from discriminating against children. The ads included promotions like "one mature person," "quiet adult location" and "great for a single person." They are discriminatory because they make it harder for families to...