City: Group needs license for operations
Columbus code inspectors have found nonworking smoke detectors and other violations at nine houses operated by the William Brady Charitable Organization, a housing program for people with addiction, mental illness and other problems.
The city noted those violations after first discovering that Brady has operated for years without rooming house licenses. The founders have been in the housing business since 2009, serving more than 3,000 people, but had never checked state and city
codes setting minimum requirements and safety standards.
Inspectors visited the houses, mostly on the South and Near East sides, on Tuesday. They found nonworking smoke detectors in some and floors without smoke detectors in others, said Dana Rose, the city’s code-enforcement administrator. The Brady group took care of the detectors in all of the houses but one by Friday morning, and was to finish that final house by the end of the day, Rose said.
Norman Whiteside, a spokesman for the William Brady Organization, said Friday afternoon that “the smoke detector issue has been effectively dealt with.”
The city plans to issue 30-day orders by Monday telling the Brady group that it still must obtain rooming house licenses and fix the rest of the code violations.
“If the city is correct, then by all means, the William Brady Organization is going to be in compliance,” Whiteside said, adding that the Brady group founders were still trying to determine whether to seek a rooming house license from the city or to apply for an interim residentialfacility license from the state.
Neither process is easy to grasp, he said. “We need someone to send us all the requisite materials.”
Last month, The Dispatch reported that the city did not know the Brady houses had no rooming house licenses until it received a complaint on Sept. 14.
Demand for recovery housing is surging along with the state’s crisis of addiction, and behavioral-health advocates say they worry about a lack of standards among operators. The Brady group doesn’t describe its programs as rooming houses or exclusively as recovery houses, although co-founder Karen Carlisle said the vast majority of residents have a substance-abuse disorder.
Columbus city code defines rooming houses as dwellings other than hotels and motels where rooms are “offered for pay to three or more persons.” City records show 210 licenses, but officials worry that others are operating under the radar.
In the University District, rooming houses are limited to areas with specific zoning to accommodate them.
Doreen Uhas Sauer, who leads the University Area Commission, and Matthew Hansen, executive director of the University District Organization, met recently with Columbus City Councilwoman Jaiza Page, who leads the council’s housing committee.
Uhas Sauer said she is worried about overcrowding, where 15 people are living in a house where only five or six are supposed to live. “We try to avoid people packers,” she said.
Hansen said, “How does the city determine what constitutes a family? That’s what becomes challenging in the University District.”
Page said she is exploring what more the city can do to regulate rooming houses.
In 2013, the area commission asked Jacob Hindin, an intern with Campus Partners, Ohio State University’s nonprofit development partner, for a report on University District rooming houses and what other cities are doing.
He wrote that cities need to tightly define what constitutes a household. For example, Bowling Green’s zoning code outlaws more than three unrelated adults from living in the same house. Oakwood, near the University of Dayton, prohibits two or more unrelated people from living together in singlefamily homes.
In Kent, the code defines a rooming house as a place where three or more unrelated people are living, but limits the number to a maximum of 15.
Larger cities, such as Dayton and Cincinnati, have regulations similar to Columbus.
Other cities have different strategies. Washington, D.C., has a zoning ordinance requiring each university not let its enrollment have an adverse impact on the surrounding community.