Restraining order hampers Hazleton landlords
BY WADE MALCOLM
STAFF WRITER
01/08/2007Email to a friendPrinter-friendly

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Shortly before the new year, landlords entered Hazleton City Hall and walked to the third-floor Rental Registration Office with $5 in hand.

They found a surprise when they reached the top floor and tried to renew their licenses. Technically, they couldn’t.

A federal restraining order has hog-tied the city’s landlord/tenant law, which serves a multitude of purposes, to one, controversial cause: Hazleton’s effort to expel illegal immigrants.

Development of the city’s landlord/tenant act began years several years ago — long before anyone spoke ever of illegal immigration in Hazleton. But the otherwise mundane ordinance gained notoriety over a short passage that demands every tenant provide proof of legal residency to live in the city.

Civil rights attorneys challenging Hazleton opposed the requirement alongside the more well-known Illegal Immigration Relief Act in a federal lawsuit.

With the illegal immigration issue now stalled in court — and the restraining order still in effect — Hazleton scaled back portions of the ordinance, passing a new version Dec. 28.

It no longer fines landlords for unregistered tenants. But it still serves other purposes. It forbids absentee landlords, limits the number of tenants per unit and, though tenants won’t have to register, it requires registration of every rental unit by the landlord.

“It’s unfortunate that we had to spend money to defend it,” Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta said. “But I think it will accomplish a lot of things: making sure there’s no overcrowding, the property is taken care of and code violations are corrected.”

Barletta said the city never intended the landlord/tenant ordinance to deal with immigration in the first place.

But the plaintiffs considered the changed law a victory.

“It was intimately tied in with their effort to make Hazleton the most difficult place for illegal immigrants,” said Witold J. Walczak, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney representing the plaintiffs. “We’ve clearly affected the shape of the legislation. It is crystal clear that the changes they are making are in response to the issues we’ve raised in court.”

One particular passage added to Section 7 connected the rental ordinance to immigration. Passed Aug. 17, the law required all tenants to provide the city with several pieces of personal information, including “proper identification showing proof of legal citizenship and/or residency.”

Hazleton planned to use the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program to verify legal status to enforce the original ordinance.

The lawsuit aside, using SAVE would have rendered the ordinance problematic as well.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which administers the SAVE program, still hasn’t decided whether federal law allows using SAVE to grant or deny housing.

wmalcolm@citizensvoice.com

©The Citizens Voice 2007