Apartment fire death could help fuel changes in city housing code

CEDAR RAPIDS - Landlords opposed to a proposed change in a city ordinance aren't apt to be helped by Rodney Noye's death.

Noye, 35, died on Monday in a fire at an apartment at 901 Oakland Rd. NE, an apartment that city officials said was not registered as required with the city's Code Enforcement office.

At its Tuesday evening meeting, the City Council will hold a previously scheduled public hearing to consider changes in the city's housing code. No vote is scheduled.

One proposed change would penalize landlords up to $1,000 who don't register their apartments with the city. Now the penalty is $100, which is a small enough for some landlords to adopt a “catch-me-if-you-can” approach to city regulation, Al Pansegrau, the city's chief housing inspector, said on Tuesday.

The proposed city code changes also would require landlords to pay a new, one-time, $50 license fee; would create a crime-free agreement between landlord and tenant; and would require landlords to register apartments and pay fees annually, not once every five years when they are inspected.

The proposed new arrangement would increase fees, which landlords don't like.

Pansegrau said the property at 901 Oakland Rd. NE had been inspected last by the city in 1996. He said the property has changed owners since then and spent some number of years vacant. It was vacant as recently as March when a representative of the City Assessor's Office stopped at the property, he said.

Pansegrau said he now understood that Noye had moved into the apartment as a tenant in the last month and half or so.

Friends of Noye on Monday said he lived there with two of his children, whom friends said were staying with a relative and were not at the apartment when the fire started.

The building is owned by Roger Welty and Royce McCray, according to property records. Neither could be reached. Firefighters did not locate any working smoke detectors inside the building, Greg Buelow, Fire Department spokesman, has said.

Housing inspector Pansegrau estimated that the city may know about only 70 to 80 percent of the units rented in the city.

The proposed code changes are intended, in part, to increase the percentage so city inspectors can improve its monitoring and subject more rental properties to required periodic inspections.