What to do about a sanitation summons on a 3 family?

Question

So I just received a summon in the mail for an infraction 10 days earlier: the recycling was put out too early in the day. It appears to be for $110.  I could pay it, or go to court and see what happens. I'm sure when I tell my tenants about it they will be compliant and not do it again, they're decent high functioning people.

What I'm trying to figure out is what the authorities would expect me to do about it if I had a non-compliant or vindictive tenant, or even a vindictive neighbor?  I once got a summons for the neighbor placing his trash in front of where I live and it making a mess. This is NJ, where even if I knew for sure which tenant was doing it, there's no way I could get them evicted for premature trash. But I have no idea who it is, I don't live there!  Would I be simply liable indefinitely for whatever they did?  What does the city expect me to do, be there all day, or have a webcam on the sidewalk to run over there in case someone puts their recycling out too early?  Seems to me a law needs to have a practical way to comply, no?

Frank Chin · Answer

No. I been through that. Here in NYC, the property owner is held responsible, and the sanitation inspector only sees the can, it is not his or her job to determine what is marked on the can. Here garbage can only be pulled out to the curb after 6:00PM the day before. If you got the days wrong, or as in the case of a neighbor, pulled it out noon time because he's going on vacation for 2 weeks, too bad, you get a ticket.

Back then, you have to go to court to fight tickets, and from what I hear, it'll take you most of a day, so if you have a high paying job, are you going to give up a day's wages for a stupid ticket? The neighbor who I paid to handle garbage and sweeps my sidewalk called me one morning to tell me I got a ticket for litter on the sidewalk. He tells me he sits by his from window, saw a sanitation truck come by, dump the garbage in the truck, some of it fell out, it was a windy day, so it got blown away and landed on my sidewalk. As he was retired, he offered to go with me to court to fight the ticket.

I said thanks, it won't be necessary, it's the cost of doing business, so I'll just pay it. A fellow landlord was in the same fix, bought a witness to court, and back then saved himself $50.00. I said congratulations. He said "for what, I had to pay for parking by the courthouse, lost a day of work, and the guy who was my witness, I treated him to a meal, all in all, it cost me well over $100.00" So I said "you spent $100 to s.ave $50"? Well, some people are stubborn, they rather pay $100 to save $50, and laugh about it. It's the principle of the thing

As far as labelling cans, and coming back to wash it each year and mark it anew, it'll be a total waste of time. The absentee landlord supplied 30 gallons cans to his tenants for regular garbage. Here in NYC where I am, they collect regular garbage twice a week. A typical tenant of a 2BR apartment has enough garbage to fit in a small plastic bag for half a week. Throw that in a 30 gallon can, pull it out on a windy day, the can will blow over in no time and roll all over the sidewalk and street. For a triplex, you'll have 3 pails rolling around, which is the case of the 3-plex next to mine. On recycling day, 9 cans. Ridiculous!!! From the standpoint of physics, works better that all 3 tenants dump their garbage in one can, and for half a week, that would fill up half a pail, when you pull one can out to the curb, it won't get blown over so easily. Same for recycle stuff.

Of course, you can put the garbage in small plastic bags and leave it by the curb. Then dogs and squirrels will come by, chew it to bits and leave a mess. Then, another ticket

Back then, I collect $3,500/month or so from 3 tenants, and paying some guy or a tenant $100/month to keep track of it is well worth it, and a minor cost of doing business. For me, that's the simplest solution.

Frank Chin · Answer

There are problems with this approach as I was observing a neighbor absentee landlord handling his tenants. In the beginning, he bought 9 brand new garbage pails. The city provide stickers to designate the type of recycling garbage. Fast forward 2 years, the pails are all filthy, you can't read the once clear labels, you can only identify the type of can by it's color, blue for paper goods. Can't tell it's the 1st floor can or not.

Then over time, one tenant would throw their garbage into another tenant's can. And if you're on a busy street, passersby would throw their garbage in. You're going to have very angry tenants blamed for things that the upstairs tenant did, or some passerby did.

When I had the neighbor acting as PM, he had full responsibility for handling the garbage. When people see he is responsible, and he tells tenants to keep the can area clean, make sure the covers are all on, they don't argue with him. They actually cooperate. But if you have the 3rd floor tenant telling the 2nd floor tenant to cover the cans correctly, you may find the 2nd floor tenant telling the guy to mind his own business.

And then this crazy idea about splitting the fine 3 ways. With tenants throwing garbage into someone else's bin, passersby throwing stuff in, you be in for a big fight with the tenants. Chances are, it's not even their fault. And tenants can always retaliate calling the housing department with complaints.

Frank Chin · Answer

Get yourself CCTV system and monitor it.

Pay the summons, and here in NYC, there's additional penalties when you pay late. Then send a memo to your tenants.

I owned several 3-plexes in NYC through the years and found the best way to handle it is grant rent concessions to one tenant, and have him responsible for pulling the garbage can out at the right time at night, and pulling it back in. He'll also make sure recycled garbage is handled correctly.

I since sold my 3-plexes, and back then I gave them $100.00 off the rent each month. Could be more now. Sure beats paying several $110.00 tickets, and then you have someone responsible.

I lived in a triplex once, had an absentee owner next store. With recycling, there's regular garbage, papers, and plastics. The absentee owner provided each tenant 3 cans each, one for each type, a total of nine cans. On recycle collection days, there's 9 cans in front of the building, since they also collect regular garbage. The main problem is with some many cans, there's not enough garbage for each tenant, thus weight, in each, and cans blow over. It's a disaster on garbage collection day waiting to happen, and the cans roll around the sidewalk and streets afterwards, sometimes for several days. In these instances, tickets should be issued. Normally, there's enough garbage to fill up a pail for everyone, but doing it this way, who is responsible for pulling the cans out?

The bottom line is, pay someone or pay fines. The best type of tenant who handles this is someone retired, who's around to keep an eye on things. I once paid a retired neighbor to do this. The other way is to find a kid in the neighborhood who could use a little spending money.

Frank Chin · Answer

While living in areas like NYC is great, it's issues like these that make you want to leave. And there isn't much you can do about it.

My dad owned a mixed use property in NYC for 50 years. I owned rentals here for nearly 40 years. I never heard of being tickets for pulling out garbage can too early till it happened to a neighbor going on vacation some years back. He either haul to out at noon the day before instead of the mandated 6:00PM or let the garbage sit in front of his house for 2 week till he comes back. In fact he's 80 years old at the time, owned the house for 30 years, and he never knew about the regulation for ticketed for hauling trash out early. And neither have I.

In OP's case, I doubt the tenant knew about the regulation or if she as landlord ever told the tenant about it. In that case, the landlord has to make the regulation well known to the tenant, or else it's not the tenant's fault.

The Times article touches on a matter I see often. In busy areas of the city, due to the lack of public garbage pails, or where there is, overflowing, people resort to throwing garbage into pails of private homes. When they do this, they don't pay attention whether it's regular or recycle garbage. On garbage collection day, inspectors come, check through the garbage and if the find recycle garbage in the regular garbage, they ticket you.

Are you going to go to court every time it happens?

Now the tenant in the Times article wanted to know if it's fair for the landlord to then charge the clients for ticket fines. As a matter of fact, I know landlords who do this. As a landlord myself, I rented to many tenants that hardly lives at the place, like traveling salesmen, interns at a hospital. If they come by their apartments 2 or 3 days a month, why on earth should they pay part of the landlord's ticket? Why would anyone think they're responsible.

Then there's the issue bought up of having the tenant ticketed directly. Bad idea. I had a rental out in Long Island where I can have things billed directly to the renter, and in NYC, as a commercial tenant, I had taxes and other items billed directly to me, not the landlord. Landlord's don't realize when they do this, the tenant don't pay, they add fines and penalties to it, and they add it to your property tax account after a certain period of time. I had that happen to me, a tenant moved out, then I found out months later bills, fines accumulated were not paid and added to my property tax account with fines and penalties. By then, the tenant moved to Florida.

The better thing to do is pay it first and go after the tenant.

Finally, in my dad's case, where he was constantly getting tickets for comingling garbage, due to passersby, as at time he's in his 80's and disabled, my brother would come by once a week, grab whatever garbage he had bring it to Jersey where he lives and have it picked up there.

Kevin Sobilo · Answer

@Johann Jells, the NYC article was interesting, but it doesn't say a tenant cannot be held responsible. Anyone who causes you a loss can be held responsible. It doesn't really matter if they are your tenant or not.

If someone throws a rock through your window, can the person who threw the rock be held responsible for the repair or any resulting damage or loss as a result? Of course. This is no different.

I can understand the law protecting tenants. Tenants should not be held responsible for things they didn't do. They aren't there to protect the property as an owner would, but if they take the action that causes you a loss they are responsible. The key is showing they took the action. In the case of a bin being out front early, unless there is a police report showing someone broke into their unit and removed the bin I think you're claim would be well founded.

Frank Chin · Answer

Land lording is a people business. If you as a landlord start being a ball buster, tenants can come up with all types of claims and get you screwd.

I bought a triplex from an owner once, and to my surprise, he used all three units. Said he was sick and tired of tenants. Use the 3rd floor BR for an office, the rest of the 3rd floor was empty. I ask, what do you use the first floor for? He said "my cat lives there."

After I moved in, talked to the neighbors, found out he's harsh with the tenants, treated them like trash. When I closed on the property, there were some outstanding violations which had to be taken care of. He took care of it, and I thought no more of it.

Then a few years later, I refi the mortgage, and a few more violations turned up, all from the time the prior owner had it. It includes "building front door does not close and lock properly", "crack pane on third floor window", etc. etc. I was told the violations was recorded late, occurred before my closing, but recorded after. The mortgage company allowed me to close after I put some money into escrow. I told them, I fixed all the problems, I even installed a new front door when I moved in, so all of the issues been fixed. It only required a city inspection to clear the violations.

Now think about it. How would the city know about the front door not closing properly? How would they know about the crack pane on the 3rd floor. A tenant squealed on them no doubt. And this all ties in with what the neighbors told me, "he's a ball buster".

In this business, unless you treat the tenant as important clients, with respect, they got plenty of ways to get after you.

And he was the owner seller who ever sued me in small claims after closing. Normally all closings are final, but his attorney insert a cause in the P&S contract, "errors and omission shall survive the closing". He claims that they forgot to includes charges for a tank if fuel oil at the closing. My wife said "one of the windows had a cracked pane, so we offset it and pay him $100. He wouldn't go for it. Talked to my lawyer who told me, I can only go after him for errors and omissions, can't do the crack glass since it should be tagged in the final walk through. So I spent a while week going through the contract.

What happened? He explained to the judge that the "fuel oil" was mistakenly omitted at the closing. Judge looked at me, I nodded. Then it was my turn, and the judge ask me "do you have any errors and omissions?" expecting an answer of NO from me and he can make an immediate ruling. I surprised him and said "yes, as a matter of fact I went through the contract and the closing and found over 20 errors that where he owes me money". So the judge said "wow, let me hear them". At first, the judge assumed I didn't read the contract, and for each thing, says "where does it say that in the contract" and I had it marked. As I was going through the list, the judge would say "what else?", and on the 12th item, I said "he owes me $3.81 for water each day he stayed beyond the closing". He stayed 20 days pass closing. At this point, the judge threw up his hands, and said "are we're going to be here all night redoing the closing?".

What did the judge do? Asked him how much paid for the property and how much he sold it for. He said he got it for $50,000 and sold it to me for $160,000. The judge then exploded "you mean you made over $100,000 and you're wasting everyone's time over a measly $100? The judge then looked at me and I said, I heard he does that to every one." The judge then said to him  "I rule you get nothing".

Normally I don't waste time going to court fighting things as I told Ken above. But I make exceptions when the offender is a total jerk, as is in this case.

Johann Jells · Answer

That "landlord pays, tenants cannot be held responsible" as basically said in the article, is what I see as problematic when viewed as a slippery slope. It opens the door for an unevictable tenant to harass a landlord by deliberately attracting tickets. I had legacy tenants in one property that would have done this had it occurred to them!  They were calling every city inspection agency with frivolous claims just to harass me.

Frank Chin · Answer

I did a little digging and here's a NY Times article that confirms what I understand to be the local regulations: Sanitation fines

While they talk about rent regulated units, my understanding is it applies to all residential rental units throughout NYC.

Frank Chin · Answer

Here in NYC, the hold the property owner responsible. There's been controversy on it, so on a busy street, somebody opened up a sandwich, dropped the wrapper on the sidewalk in front of your house, the property owner gets the citation. I can't say I'm the absentee owner, couldn't be me, go after the litter bug, What they did was amend the law that they come by at a certain interval, like between 8:00AM to 10:AM to inspect your sidewalk, and only then issue a citation if they see anything. My dad owned a commercial property for many years, and while the lease calls for the tenant be responsible, citations are issued to the property owner. He gives the citations over to the tenant, but ultimately, when the tenant doesn't pay, they come after him. Don't know if the laws works differently where you are, but here in NYC, the property owner is held responsible.

What to do about a sanitation summons on a 3 family?

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