Safe Housing Crime Free Program Spotlights Criminal Activity At Rental Units

When Judy Delzer jumped into her job as manager of a North Side apartment complex, she knew the property was not very popular with the neighbors.

Residents held late-night parties that generated a constant flow of traffic. Some tenants were prostitutes, who brought in even more traffic — people who didn’t care at all about the complex.

“It was not too well looked on by the neighborhood,” Delzer said of the Rosewood Club Apartments at 401 E. Magnesium.

So she decided to try to turn the climate of the complex around. She doled out warnings to rowdy residents and told them their behavior wouldn’t be tolerated. She tightened the tenant screening process and tried to send a message that she would be fair, but that the rules had to be obeyed.

As she worked to build up the Rosewood Club’s reputation, Delzer attended a Block Watch meeting and happened to hear about the Crime Free Multi-Housing Program. She signed up for the training session.

Now, three years later, lights blaze from every doorway, overgrown shrubs have been trimmed back, and a sign hangs at the entrance to the complex, stating, “We have joined the Spokane Crime Free Multi-Housing Program. Keeping illegal activity out of rental property.”

“The designation means we’ve started something, and if we all follow suit, this area will be a better place to live,” Delzer said. “But if the other properties are not trying to make theirs better, the (bad) element will come to theirs and spill onto us. We need other people to help us.”

The Crime Free Multi-Housing Program started in 1989 in Portland and has spread to at least 40 states and Canada.

Spokane’s Block Watch program started developing a similar program in 1998 in both the city and county. It motored along until funding for Block Watch was cut, along with most of the employees overseeing the program. That left dozens of apartment managers and owners with part one of the program completed, but no way to continue. Until now.

Since the beginning of the year, the wide umbrella of Community Oriented Policing Services has stretched to cover Block Watch. And, the Crime Free Multi-Housing Program is being revived with renewed vigor.

For $35, apartment managers and owners can get training, a certificate and a Crime Free Multi-Housing sign to post on the property.

“It’s a great advertising tool,” said Nancy Lewis, Block Watch specialist. “If I was a single woman out on my own for the first time and that sign caught my eye, it would make a big difference.”

The Crime Free Multi-Housing Program consists of three parts. First is a two-day, eight-hour training session that covers, among other things:

Preparing the property so it does not attract crime.

Applicant screening - how to conduct credit checks and background checks.

Rental agreements - how to enforce a drug- and violence-free lease addendum.

Ongoing management techniques that help reduce the possibility of illegal activity.

Lastly, the eviction process.

“It’s good information,” Delzer said. “It’s not threatening, and there’s no test. It just makes managers more aware when they go back to their property.”

Sandy Richards, crime prevention practitioner for the Spokane Police Department, runs some of the training sessions along with a member of the Spokane County Sheriff’s Department. She stressed that the training is not anti-renter, but gives managers and owners a way to make their properties “a place of quality, where people can live safely.”

The second part of the program teaches property owners and managers about crime prevention through design. Speakers talk about how to make apartment complexes safer through things like trimming shrubs and low-hanging branches to eliminate places where thieves could hide, adding security lighting and having clearly marked fire lanes.

“After class I looked at the property and thought hmmm…I need to do this and that, and started making a list for the maintenance guys,” Delzer said.

After fulfilling those requirements, program participants need to schedule crime-prevention training for their residents. Part of that includes creating a community-oriented environment within the complex.

“If people know each other, they will be more apt to care about other people’s homes as much as they care about their own,” Lewis said. “They’ll know who’s supposed to be there and who’s not supposed to be there. It’ll make the whole place safer.”

Even so, the program is not a guarantee for a crime-free existence.

“We had some car break-ins a week ago,” Delzer admitted. “But that’ll happen wherever you go. All we can do is make (the buildings) as safe as possible.”

Besides the Rosewood Club Apartments, the Collins Apartments downtown and the Mt. Vernon Terrace Apartments on the South Side also have received the Crime Free Multi-Housing designation. Several others, including Coventry Court Apartments and the Richard Allen Apartments, are working toward completion of the program, Richards said.

Apartment complexes that receive the designation must be recertified every year, to make sure everything is being kept in compliance with the program’s standards.

And, the fixes are usually not cheap. In addition to the $35 training fee, owners and managers often must spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to bring everything in the complex up to the program’s standard.

Delzer said she spent about $1,000 for new lights, about $2,000 for new door numbers, $200 for peep holes and $3,000 for bush removal at the 159-unit complex that sits on 10 acres. But she also said they were improvements she would have done regardless of whether she was in the program.

“Things won’t happen overnight,” she said, praising her staff for helping get everything done. “Maybe it takes a year, but properties should be working toward that.”

The result is a well-worth-it feeling of safety and well being.

Carey Sorensen has been living at the Rosewood Club Apartments with her 10-month-old daughter and fiance for seven months.

“I really like it here,” she said. “ Everything’s safe. They’ve taken trees out, and there’s lighting everywhere. There’s nowhere someone could be hiding. I don’t have to worry about people lurking around after dark.”

This sidebar appeared with the story: Details

For more information about the Crime Free Multi-Housing program, contact Nancy Lewis at 625-3303.