The "We Buy Houses" signs plastered illegally across the city drive Robert Strupp crazy.
It is not merely that they are ugly. Strupp, with the Community Law Center in Baltimore, sees them as neighborhood destabilizers that make it easier for real estate predators to find prey - but it is not just that, either.
No, it is that the city has yet to enforce a nearly two-year-old law allowing citizens who tear them down to take them to city officials so the authorities can fine the sign owners. Regulations have not been put into place to make it possible.
"There's no teeth to it," said Strupp, director of research and policy at the nonprofit group, which has about 1,200 once-displayed signs piled up in its offices. "Nobody has been able to successfully take them anywhere."
The law, signed by then-Mayor Martin O'Malley in June 2006, directed residents to take signs posted on city-owned buildings, land, trees and the like to the Department of Public Works. When the Community Law Center came bearing signs, however, it was told the department couldn't enforce that part of the law.
Regulations setting down the rules did not get past the draft stage, a city spokesman explained, and on top of that, the department's code enforcers were reassigned to the Department of Housing and Community Development last year. Follow-up legislation passed in December changed the drop-off site to the housing agency.
But regulations setting down the rules still have not been written. It is now up to the housing department.
"I'm confused by why they cannot - why they really won't - enforce it," said City Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke, lead sponsor of the 2006 bill. "Citizens are empowered by law to remove the signs. The hitch is the bureaucracy's cooperation in accepting signs from the citizens and accepting their affidavits that the sign was illegally posted. And it's ridiculous. ... There's an army out there that's being held back from the attack."
Sterling Clifford, a spokesman for the city, said draft regulations were circulated to community groups soon after the first law passed, "and then they kind of disappeared" when few offered feedback. He said the city needs input because the law states that any individual taking in a sign can name a nonprofit group to share in half the fine collected. Violators can be fined up to $200 per sign.
"We need to restart that feedback process," he said.
