Cleveland is making it easier for the city to declare a home or business a nuisance to neighbors, which allows the city to fine property owners over such illegal activity as drug use, excessive noise, gunfire and stunt driving.
City Council members signed off on the update to the city’s criminal nuisance laws Monday. The law lowers the legal bar that city officials must clear in order to name a property a nuisance. It also gives the safety director the power to require property owners to comply with a nuisance abatement plan. Ultimately, property owners face fines if police calls continue.
In the past, council members turned in the addresses of nuisances only to see little action from City Hall, Safety Committee Chair Michael Polensek said in an interview.
Between 2019 and 2024, the city declared 26 properties to be nuisances, according to figures shared with City Council this month. The old nuisance code wasn’t sufficient to deal with party houses, fights and loud music in bar parking lots and other neighborhood disturbances, Polensek said.
“‘Neighbors from hell’ is being diplomatic,” Polensek said, citing a Northeast Side house that he said has generated constituent complaints. “Fights, chaos, shooting, cars parked all over the street, all hours of the night, people coming and going.”
He credited Safety Director Wayne Drummond and other officials for working with him to come up with a new approach.
Previously, city code was interpreted to require a string of arrests and police citations before the city could label a property as a nuisance, Assistant Safety Director Jason Shachner said. Under the new nuisance law, police will be able to rely on statements from witnesses about problems at a property.
Suppose police are called out to a house that’s the site of a late-night noisy party. But when officers arrive, the partiers have dispersed. Now, police will be able to flag that property as a potential nuisance even without arrests or citations. All they need are for witnesses to vouch that they heard a noisy party.
It all can start with a call to police, either to 911 or to the non-emergency line at 216-621-1234.
If police collect evidence of illegal activity at a property three times in a year, the safety director can require the property owner to come up with a plan for stopping the nuisances. Property owners face civil fines of $100 a day if they don’t submit nuisance abatement plans.
Owners have to pay escalating fines of $250 to $1,000 for subsequent nuisances that happen on their properties in the 12 months after they submit their plans.
The old code defined nuisances as illegal activity by owners, occupants or people invited to a property. The new code applies to people “associated with the property” — including trespassers at vacant properties, bar patrons and people in parking lots.
Updating an ‘unusable’ nuisance law
At Monday’s Finance Committee meeting, Ward 10 Council Member Hairston said nuisance properties had driven some people to move to the suburbs. He suggested making the law tougher by fining property owners after a third nuisance rather than a fourth.
“I’m glad to see this is finally happening here,” he said. “We are updating a very outdated, a very unusable ordinance that has done nothing to help us across the city.”
Council passed an amendment from Ward 5 Council Member Richard Starr that counted nuisance complaints in a 12-month window against a property owner. In a previous version of the legislation, the nuisance count at a property would reset after six months.
At committee hearings, Council Members Jasmin Santana and Brian Kazy asked representatives from Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration if there were safeguards against people filing false complaints against their neighbors.
Shachner said that property owners can appeal a nuisance letter to the safety director and then to the Board of Zoning Appeals.
“All because somebody doesn’t like a neighbor,” Kazy replied at last week’s safety committee meeting. “That’s an awful lot.”
Shachner said residents should call police if they suspect a crime is being committed on a property — rather than by making personal appeals to city officials outside the dispatch system.
Ward 9 Council Member Kevin Conwell said some residents call their council members about nuisances instead, for fear of being identified in police records or of officers coming to their homes.
“They call us, and they’re afraid to call the police,” he said on Monday.
Shachner said that police were aware of such fears and that it was “unlikely” that a witness would be revealed.
Cleveland Documenters: From the notes