It probably didn’t surprise anyone in this neighborhood to read a recent article in the daily press stating that the ordinance requiring real estate companies to register the names of the straw parties they use in real estate transactions was being ignored by the real estate industry.
Anyone who has studied property blight knows that real estate owners can avoid court action on their violations of the real estate and housing codes if they change straw parties often enough. It is a neat system. If 6000 Blank Street is cited for violations by a city inspector, the legal procedure is begun and paper filled out citing Joe Doe, the owner of record. Only when the process server arrives, he finds out that John Doe has deeded the property to Richard Roe, so the procedure starts again. Roe deeds the property to Smith, who deeds it to Jones and so on, and months and years pass while the building continues deteriorating.
The Board of Aldermen can do nothing more important for the future of this city than to see that this ordinance is enforced and the real estate interests, which have contributed so mightily to urban blight, made to register the names of the straw parties they control.
Then tenants and neighborhood groups need not spend years just looking for the name of the true owners of local property. As Mort Sahl once put it, “You can’t reform ’em if you can’t catch ’em.”
Originally published in The Paper, December 1972.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1972_12.pdf, printed page(s) 2.
