On MassLive.com’s Springfield discussion forum, poster "NoPol" initiated a thread (27818) positing that the city ought to "institute a serious crackdown on illegal apartment conversions," and enabling "legitimate renters to get a fair market rate on their properties." From his post:
Let’s say you own a two-family house. You look for tenants for a fair rent—say, $700. If you rent both units out you can get $1,400 for your house. But so many people have chopped up their two-families into three and four families that they can offer rents of $400 and make more than you can. So if you play by the rules, you’re screwed.
…Presumably there are more kids in those chopped up apartments. Springfield doesn’t see any extra tax revenue from the extra units, but those kids go to school. That drains the city’s resources. … The streets weren’t designed for four tenants to live in a two-family building. That drives away decent people who don’t want to bother with the hassle of trying to find parking. And finally, when owner-occupants can’t get a fair return on their property, they don’t want to be owner-occupants. They sell to people who own rental portfolios, people who can mimimize costs by owning 5, 10, 20 properties. Unfortunately this also leads to those properties being ill-kept. That’s bad for the city.
Poster "heidilee" chimed in with this:
I was shocked to discover that the 2 family dwellings were only valued at around $90,000! There is decidedly something wrong with the tax assessment system when houses that have a total of 2000 plus living space and provide rental income are assessed far lower than most 1000 sq ft single family houses.
No wonder the Eastern Ma. and other slumlords are buying up these properties—if the assessors taxed these dwellings at the proper value then maybe they could assess some of the single family dwellings at a more accurate rate—people are sick of getting the shaft.
And poster "Xiao" had the following to say:
I rented a beautiful 3 bedroom apt that had six rooms. I lived by myself and have no children or any overnight guests (until my boyfriend moved in—then just 2 of us).
We didn’t drain the city’s resources, we didn’t burden the schools, and we didn’t even fill the trash bucket every week. Stop picking on all the renters. Some of us are really decent people.
"Xiao" called the apartment beautiful, but it’s all in the past tense.
