Residents cry foul over how city enforces code laws
The city has been cracking down on property code violations that in the past had been overlooked. This aggressive inspection has angered a number of residents. File photo
(The issue of code enforcement in Hamtramck has been a hot-button one in recent months as the city cracks down on violations. The following article first appeared in Outlier Media and is being reprinted with permission.)
By Koby Levin, Outlier Media
Is a barrage of tickets making Hamtramck cleaner?
After a sharp increase in tickets for litter and overgrown weeds, some residents think the city’s priorities are out of order.
It took Hamtramck city employees two days to blanket a single block of their 2-square-mile city with tickets.
They dinged residents for overgrown weeds, litter, misplaced trash cans, “building disrepair,” unclear address signage. Some homes won the dubious honor of two citations at once.
Fewer than a quarter of homes passed muster. When the paperwork blizzard cleared, the city had issued 50 tickets to the 66 houses on the 2200 block of Faber Street.
One week earlier, inspectors dished out 95 tickets citywide, plus 198 written warnings.
By the numbers
• 7,342 — households in Hamtramck
• 3,211 — code enforcement tickets issued to Hamtramck residents in 2023 (Outlier analysis)
• 2,065 — tickets issued in 2021 (Outlier analysis)
• 2 — approximate area of Hamtramck, in square miles
• 2.24x — increase in Hamtramck’s code enforcement spending in 2023-24 versus 2021-22
A new crop of Hamtramck leaders is attempting to enforce their way to a clean city. Since 2021, the city roughly doubled its code enforcement team, and the rate of ticketing surged. In the first eight months of 2024, residents received nearly three times as many tickets as they did during the same period in 2021.
It’s tough to find anyone in Hamtramck who doesn’t prefer a neat, litter-free neighborhood. But the administration’s aggressive approach has become another flash point in a tiny city already grappling with national political tensions. (Donald Trump was mentioned more than a dozen times at this week’s City Council meeting.)
Iryna Stetsyk, who owns a rental property on Evaline St., appreciates the city’s efforts to keep the area clean, even though her property received two tickets in July. But she says the city is often too punitive. One example: She received a ticket for leaving her trash can in the alley two hours after the deadline to bring it in.
“That’s too soon,” she said. “It’s not right.”
Debating city priorities
Max Garbarino, Hamtramck’s former police chief who became city manager in early 2023, has prioritized code enforcement. He views it as an essential public service that addresses resident complaints about litter.
All those tickets, he argued, have yielded cleaner streets and neater yards.
“If the city is able to square itself away and hold the people causing the mess responsible … then why shouldn’t we?” he asked. “Should we just let it overgrow and throw trash everywhere and deteriorate?”
Some residents say: maybe.
“I’m not against cleaning up the city,” said 40-year resident Steve Paljusevic. “But the way they’re approaching enforcement right now is overly aggressive.”
Jamila Martin has lived in Hamtramck since 2015 and was recently ticketed for weeds and overfilled garbage cans.
“The idea that we’d spend our very limited budget on people driving around and taking pictures of relatively minor weeds and then going back to city hall and writing them up — it’s just a really bad use of public money,” she said. “We have almost no senior services, we have very little for young people, the library and rec center are closed on weekends.”
The city spent $242,000 on code enforcement last year and employed 1.23 code enforcement officers per 10,000 Hamtramck residents.
By comparison, Dearborn’s per capita budget is 61% larger than Hamtramck’s, but it employs only 0.86 officers per 10,000 residents.
Many residents who spoke with Outlier Media said they were taken aback by $100 tickets for what they consider trivial problems — a few scraggly weeds in an alleyway or a lawn barely taller than the maximum allowable seven inches.
On a recent afternoon, a resident who asked not to be named for fear of retribution, expressed frustration about the three tickets her family received this year. One was for litter in her front yard, which she said was blown there by the wind.
“We are a middle-class family,” she said, her son helping to translate from Bengali. “If I forget to bring the garbage can back in for one day, that’s $80.”
Given Hamtramck’s precarious finances, many residents told Outlier they suspect the city is using tickets as a revenue source. Garbarino insisted the code enforcement department doesn’t come close to covering its costs, but he couldn’t share precise figures. The numbers he shared — which include payments for code, building and rental violations — add up to roughly $250,000 in revenue over the last year.
How to avoid paying a ticket
Residents get one warning before they’re ticketed for code violations.
If they do get a ticket, it is often waived if the city receives proof that the issue is resolved.
But that option isn’t mentioned when residents get tickets by mail. City Manager Max Garbarino explained that the city can’t guarantee that a ticket will be waived. The code enforcement department can only ask the court to dismiss it.
If you get a ticket or a warning, document the fix and get in touch with the code enforcement department:
• Email code@hamtramckcity.gov
• Call 313-800-5233, Ext. 813
• Stop by the first floor of City Hall, 3401 Evaline St.
Volunteers step up for seniors
Code enforcement has become such an outsized issue in Hamtramck that it’s created its own little ecosystem.
A group of neighbors has stepped up to make sure the city’s zealous enforcement doesn’t create hardships for elderly or disabled residents who can’t remove weeds or pick up litter and can’t afford a fine.
“The people we help are seniors who tend to not have a lot of family around,” said Julia Sosin, who estimates she volunteers about six hours a month doing yard work to help people avoid tickets. “They’re on a fixed income, or they have major health issues that probably take all of their income, so they really can’t afford even a small amount of money each month to pay someone to cut their grass.”
Hamtramck hired Max Ryan, a leader of the volunteer group, for a part-time role coordinating the effort. Code officers refer cases to Ryan when residents need help.
But Ryan, who is far outnumbered by code enforcement officers, spends hours mowing lawns off the clock.
Sosin said it’s difficult to find enough volunteers to meet the need as the city writes more tickets.
Is the city actually cleaner?
Garbarino insists the answer is “yes.”
“Have you walked around the city lately?” he asked rhetorically.
When Outlier Media stopped by the litter-strewn spots highlighted in the city’s application for federal code enforcement funding, they’d been cleaned up.
Still, litter will be a tough issue to eradicate in Michigan’s most densely populated city. During recent visits, we spotted plenty of it just about everywhere we walked in Hamtramck, and some residents said they haven’t noticed much of a difference.
This leaves some questions about the city’s code enforcement spending: Is the city actually cleaner? If so, how much? And is it clean enough to justify the investment?
Anthony Bist, code enforcement supervisor for the city, said the job never ends.
“You’re almost chasing your tail,” he said. “By the time you’re four blocks in, on the first block the grass is already overgrown.”
Posed Nov.1, 2024
(You can read the online version of this article at https://outliermedia.org/hamtramck-tickets-code-enforcement/?fbclid=IwY2xjawF8rYpleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHQWcQxxVlPIiR8bZzg7MJ-M_sq_dqNPj2nvnuJN11Sl1TCTHrYohGUHj1A_aem_-sH7cDv9vmwyzCzL406cJg.)
