You can’t fight city hall? Don’t tell this to Jose Andrade
The Lake County landlord has been doing it for nine years at a cost of $130,000 in attorneys’ fees, multiple court rulings and professional counseling for his emotional troubles: ‘This has really messed me up’
You can’t fight city hall?
Don’t tell this to Jose Andrade, who’s been doing it for more than nine years at a cost of $130,000 in attorneys’ fees, multiple court rulings and appeals, and professional counseling for his emotional troubles.
“This has really messed me up,” said Andrade, a Lake County landlord who owns 32 properties with 62 housing units.
His entanglement with the city of Hammond dates back to Dec. 23, 2012, when police were dispatched to one of Andrade’s housing units, in the 6600 block of Jefferson Avenue, for two complaints of a domestic disturbance on the same day.
“It was shortly afterward that I got a call from the city’s code enforcement for an inspection,” said Andrade, who owns 10 properties in Hammond.
City inspectors determined that Andrade’s five-flat rental unit was unsafe and illegally converted into a multifamily apartment
building. The two-story home was originally constructed as a single-family residence more than 100 years ago, not as a multiunit structure, city officials told him. Andrade disagrees: “I got wrongly targeted by the city.”
He points out that his building has a central staircase, five bathrooms and five kitchens with sinks manufactured in 1915, and U.S. Census Bureau reports from a century ago showing multiple tenants at that address.
“It was never a single-family home,” Andrade, 60, said a few years ago when he first contacted me about this legal battle.
I didn’t write about it, wrongly presuming that he would either drop the case or it would be settled. Andrade has no intention of dropping the case despite the headaches and heartaches it has caused him and his family.
“I would not have put myself and my family through this if I wasn’t 100% sure I was correct,” he told me last week after a promising court ruling.
On Aug. 25, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Andrade can pursue a federal lawsuit against the city, holding that a district court incorrectly found that Andrade’s federal suit was “intertwined” with state court proceedings. “It is clear on the face of the complaint that Andrade’s claims are not ‘direct challenges to any state court order ...’ ” Judge Michael Kanne wrote.
Andrade said afterward, “This is my first real win of meaning. But it’s far from over.”
This fact is certain. Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr., a defendant in the lawsuit, said the city is not backing down in what he describes as a legal standoff.
“We intend to file a summary judgment on this case, and we expect to ultimately be victorious,” McDermott told me after reading through the latest ruling. “Mr. Andrade has the right to keep pushing this case, but the city has the right to defend itself in court.”
If the city concedes in any way to Andrade, other landlords and property owners will expect a similar response, McDermott said.
“It’s my job to make neighborhoods safe in this city through codes and ordinances,” he said. “If we back down to Mr. Andrade, the floodgates will open and all the progress we’ve made will go away. One of the first promises I made when I ran for mayor was for the city to identify illegal (housing) cut-ups and convert them back to single-family housing.”
Some landlords are notorious for buying single-family units, illegally converting them into multiunit housing and burdening the city with additional needed services, vehicles on streets, and unsafe living conditions, McDermott said.
“It was having a negative effect on our neighborhoods, so I cracked down on it thousands of time since I’ve been mayor,” he said. “We’ve been very aggressive in returning our housing stock to single-family homes. This city has 25,000 single-family homes and
Mr. Andrade’s home got caught up in this crackdown.”
Andrade currently has five tenants in that building; two who pay him directly and three who receive subsidized housing funding from the government.
“This has been a multifamily unit from day one. I should know,” Andrade said, noting he was raised in a basement apartment in East Chicago. “There is zero chance that I’m wrong with this issue. The city just doesn’t want me to have my day in court.”
McDermott said Andrade’s home is just one of 25,000 single-family houses in the city, nothing more: “There’s no conspiracy against Mr. Andrade.”
Andrade said, “I’ve spent more than $130,000 in attorneys’ fees, so just imagine how much taxpayers’ money that the city could have been spent elsewhere.”
Early in this dispute, a Board of Public Works hearing ruled in favor of the city, prompting the legal moves by Andrade, whose case has been through Lake Superior Court and Indiana Court of Appeals. Both courts upheld the city’s ruling, and the Indiana Supreme Court and U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case, prompting the federal court filing.
Andrade’s lawyer, Patrick B. McEuen shared with me what he describes as the lawsuit’s “smoking gun” exhibit — a city document from Jan. 2, 2013, with the notation, “GAVE TO FAST TRACK MATT,” a reference to Matt Saliga, employed at the time as a city of Hammond inspector.
“The fast track program is the unannounced policy of targeting Section 8 housing in upscale Hammond neighborhoods,” McEuen said. “Discovery will uncover if Hammond police were involved in referring properties to this program.”
Andrade has approached the U.S. Attorney’s office and other government agencies, claiming the city has conducted excessive and costly building demolitions. “That’s the real issue here,” he said.
This case is complicated, with a potentially precedent-setting ruling. It will likely continue in the courts for another a year or more, so I plan to dig deeper into it in a future column.
Meanwhile, both sides are convinced they will eventually win.
“We remain confident we will prevail on all counts,” McEuen said.
“I strongly feel like we’re on the right side of the law,” McDermott countered. “You know the old saying, don’t fight city hall.”