Buying a house and subdividing it into apartments is no longer allowed in Harrison.
By a unanimous vote Monday, the township commissioners approved an ordinance to that effect. There were no objections from about 20 residents who were present.
"In any section of the township, you cannot take a residential property and convert it into more units than you started out with," township Solicitor Chuck Means said at the public hearing preceding the approval.
Converting large older homes into buildings with multiple apartments has been a common practice throughout the Alle-Kiski Valley for years.
Township commissioners made no secret that the ordinance is designed to discourage absentee landlords — people who live elsewhere but buy properties in the township and rent them out.
Township officials said they often subdivide the properties to increase profits but spend little to maintain them and don't screen prospective tenants.
Absentee landlords have long been blamed by township officials for the decline of housing stock in the Natrona neighborhood, and that trend continues, according to Bill Godfrey. Godfrey is the leader of Natrona Comes Together, a neighborhood improvement group.
"It seems to be a trend where people are buying these houses at sheriff's sale dirt cheap and then dividing them into apartments and not taking care of them," Godfrey testified at the hearing.
"You create a slum, is what you're doing," said Commissioner Gary Lilly, who lives in Natrona.
Commissioners' chairman George Conroy said the ordinance should deter investors looking to make fast money by converting an old house into several apartments.
He said that's because money for repairs needed to make older houses comply with building codes and eligible for occupancy permits will take longer to recoup.
"If it's going to take like new wiring to get someone in there, if they can only rent it to one person, it's going to take a while for them to get that money back," Conroy said.
While Conroy said he doesn't like to see houses vacant for a long period of time, he also said, "To me that's better than filling them with criminals."
Lilly and Means said there are other problems that stem from the converted dwellings. Means said when a single-family dwelling that once accounted for one or two parking spaces along the street is turned into multiple units, it suddenly is taking up six or eight spaces, and parking becomes a premium.
"The parking is the big thing," Lilly said. "You get the congestion and all the problems that go with it."
Means said he wrote similar ordinances for other communities such as Bellevue, and they have worked.
