Hundreds of communities across the U.S. have tried for decades to reduce crime, combat gangs, and address noise and other neighborhood problems through the use of “crime-free” or “public nuisance” laws that encourage landlords and allow tenants to evict when the police or an emergency situation arises. crews are called repeatedly to the same addresses.
The ordinances have long been the subject of criticism that such policies are ineffective and more heavily enforced in poor neighborhoods and against people of color, but are now coming under scrutiny as sources of mental health discrimination.
Last November, the U.S. Department of Justice released what it called a first-of-its-kind finding, telling a Minneapolis suburb that its enforcement of a crime-free law illegally discriminated against people with mental health problems.
Other cities and jurisdictions are joining a growing movement to reconsider, rewrite or repeal laws as criticism and lawsuits escalate.
Crime and nuisance ordinances have been in existence for years and are in widespread use. More than 2,000 cities across the country have adopted such policies since the 1990s, according to the Chicago-based Shriver Center on Poverty Law. The International Crime Free Association says at least 3,000 international cities also use it.
Under such ordinances, landlords can be fined or lose their rental permits if they fail to evict tenants whose actions are considered a public nuisance, including those who sell drugs or are suspected of other crimes. They may also be required to screen potential tenants and limit the number of people living in a house or apartment.
But each regulation is different: unique in what it aims to achieve, how it is enforced and what consequences are imposed for breaking it. Many are also vague about who and what is considered a public nuisance.
In Anoka, Minnesota, the Minneapolis suburb under scrutiny by the DOJ, the “Crime Free Housing” ordinance covers excessive noise, “unsubstantiated calls to the police” and allowing a “physically offensive condition ‘. While the ordinance says nuisance calls involve “disorderly conduct,” such as criminal activity and actions that endanger others, it does not define unwarranted calls or physically offensive circumstances.
Critics and courts say these subjective ambiguities have enabled discrimination against certain groups of people.
Federal fair housing laws prohibit landlords from asking whether someone has a disability, including an intellectual disability, or refusing to rent to them on that basis. But many crime-free laws direct landlords to screen rental applicants, sometimes by the same officials who decide whether emergency calls for help or an individual’s behavior will count against a tenant or the landlord itself.
Some jurisdictions also share detailed information about these calls with landlords, which housing activists say is often shared further among landlords when discussing why they don’t consider a former tenant a good rental prospect.
One such law in Hesperia, California, led to a federal lawsuit after a resident was forced to leave her home and move into a motel after asking for help when her boyfriend was having a mental health crisis. The city’s ordinance required landlords to have potential tenants’ applications screened by the local sheriff’s office. According to the lawsuit, the agency then shared with landlords a list of people it identified as potentially troublesome tenants.
Advocates say the reluctance to rent to people previously hospitalized for mental health issues, as well as city policies that discourage renting to people who have been arrested, worsens the situation.
People face homelessness or “being forced to cycle from an institution to a homeless shelter,” said Corey Bernstein, executive director of the National Disability Rights Network.
A lack of community services often means that prisons serve as “de facto psychiatric centers” for people with mental illnesses, said Devon Orland, litigation director at the Georgia Disability Rights Advocacy Office.
“We’ve seen people on street corners yelling or getting angry,” Orland said. “They don’t want that place around and then they show up again, or they don’t leave right away and they get arrested for criminal trespassing.”
Critical studies and lawsuits show that enforcement of nuisance laws often occurs in poorer neighborhoods and communities of color.
An August 2018 report from the American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Civil Liberties Union found that data from Rochester and Troy, New York, showed the strongest enforcement of “no crime” and “public nuisance” laws in poor areas and areas with a large minority.
A 2017 federal lawsuit against Peoria, Illinois, similarly plotted three years of data on a map of the city and found that almost all nuisance reports were made in neighborhoods with higher percentages of residents of color.
Other studies and lawsuits indicate that such ordinances are typically a response to an influx of residents of color, often from larger communities such as Cleveland or Los Angeles.
When the DOJ in 2019 sued Hesperia, a city of about 101,000 residents about 60 miles (97 kilometers) northeast of Los Angeles, the agency said officials there made clear that their ordinance was in response to a growing number of residents of color.
The lawsuit quoted a council member as saying that “people like that” from the Los Angeles area had “no value” and “I want them kicked out of this community as quickly as I can humanly make it happen.”
Other lawsuits have concluded that crime-free policies harm victims of domestic violence because they have repeatedly asked for police help.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development filed a complaint against the Philadelphia community of Norristown, Pennsylvania, in 2013 over an ordinance that it said allowed the city to penalize homeowners for “domestic disturbances not requiring a mandatory arrest.”
A black resident had filed a federal lawsuit over a series of incidents in 2012 involving an abusive boyfriend. Police told her she was facing deportation because of the emergency calls and later did not call police after her boyfriend stabbed her in the neck. A neighbor called police and the woman was transported to a hospital for emergency care, the lawsuit said.
At least a few states are trying to limit the scope of such regulations.
Maryland last year banned cities and counties from penalizing landlords and now prevents landlords from evicting tenants because of the number of police or emergency calls to their addresses. Early this year, California significantly limited cities’ use of crime-free policies. Advocates expect a similar push for such legislation in Illinois.
Housing advocates and civil liberties groups have also challenged ordinances in multiple states, including California, Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania, forcing cities to rewrite or repeal their ordinances in legal settlements.
Some communities have retreated on their own.
In the Minneapolis area, the communities of Golden Valley, St. Louis Park and Bloomington have repealed most or all of their ordinances as of 2020.
Other cities in the area have rewritten their ordinances, including Faribault in 2022, when it agreed to pay $685,000 to settle a federal lawsuit over the law.
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Hanna reported from Topeka, Kansas.