FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 10, 2022

From: United Athens County Tenants


UACT investigation reveals apartment ceiling collapse followed 14-year history of negligence by landlord and city officials at property whose owner is both a landlord and city official 


On August 4, 2022 United Athens County Tenants (UACT) learned of a ceiling collapse at a West Side rental apartment that endangered the lives of a family with young children and forced the family to relocate. The incident occurred that evening at 79 ½ North Shafer Street, part of a house divided into two rental units – 79 & 79 ½. 

Immediately following the ceiling collapse, UACT launched an investigation into the Shafer Street property and its landlord, Krause Rental Properties (KRP). The property is nominally owned by JEM Management, 1 of 7 different limited liability corporations affiliated with Krause Rental Properties and Joe Krausethat together own 17 different rental properties in Athens and several additional rental properties in Columbus.

To conduct our investigation we:

  • reviewed police and fire department records of the ceiling collapse;

  • reviewed code enforcement records on 17 different Krause properties in Athens, including the Shafer Street property;

  • spoke to a Shafer Street neighbor who witnessed the police and fire department response;

  • spoke to 4 recent tenants of the Shafer Street property and tenants of other Krause properties

  • reviewed tenant photos of the Shafer Street property;

  • reviewed email correspondence between tenants and the landlord regarding the Shafer Street property;

  • reviewed some Columbus city records pertaining to a Krause property in that city.

Key Findings

Landlord Negligence

Our investigation uncovered an exhaustively documented, objectively verifiable record of KRP operating as a scofflaw slumlord whose habitual negligence was primarily responsible for the August 4 ceiling collapse and who continues to jeopardize the safety of dozens of city tenants. Highlights include KRP  

  • failing 100% of regular housing inspections at 14 out of 17 Athens properties over the 14-year period we studied – including failing 100% of regular inspections of the Shafer Street property, both before and after the ceiling collapse;

  • failing 97.3% of regular housing inspections at all 17 Athens properties over a 14-year period (i.e. failing 110 out of 113 regular inspections; passing just 3); 

  • failing to voluntarily comply with the city housing code’s most basic fire safety requirement more than 90% of the time;

  • repeatedly preventing inspections by failing to show up for them; 

  • refusing to correct multiple housing code violations at 79 North Shafer upon tenant request;

  • only bringing some properties into code compliance after facing multiple threats of criminal charges;

  • violating the sections of Athens City Code that required proper drainage of rainwater from the roof of 79 ½ North Shafer, and therefore, in our judgment, causing the August 4, 2022 ceiling collapse;

  • and in Columbus, where Krause also owns rental property, violating city zoning laws by building a parking lot without a permit.

City Negligence: Mayor Patterson & City Council

The above findings are particularly disturbing given that Joe Krause, who runs KRP and oversees its rental units, is not only a landlord but also a local government official who sits on the Athens Zoning Board of Appeals, where he helps make housing decisions for the city.

Athens Mayor Steve Patterson twice appointed Krause to serve on the zoning board, first in 2019 and again in 2021 – the latter time for a 3-year term ending in 2024. Athens City Council unanimously approved the mayor’s appointment of Krause on both occasions. 

Note: Although Athens Code Enforcement Director David Riggs had agreed to fulfill a previous public records request that included data on Krause properties, when we requested records specifically pertaining to Krause properties, the request was directed to Mayor Patterson’s intern Harrison Rosenberg who attempted to deny our request. Ultimately, our requests were only fulfilled after we threatened legal action against the city.

City Negligence: Code Enforcement & Krause Properties

Our investigation also uncovered substantial negligence on the part of Athens Code Enforcement. With regard to Krause’s Athens properties, Code Enforcement

  • violated the city housing code by failing to verify that the hazardous violations city inspectors previously identified at Krause properties were subsequently corrected (this is because code inspectors failed to conduct the “re-inspections” required by city code nearly 25% of the time – i.e. 26 failures to conduct re-inspections following 110 failed inspections, or 23.6% of the time);

  • repeatedly allowed KRP to escape code compliance by simply failing to show up for inspections (10 out of 17 times that Krause failed to appear for inspections –or 58.8% of the time overall– Code Enforcement conducted no subsequent inspection or re-inspection that year);

  • often failed to conduct regular inspections of KRP properties without any explanation;

  • allowed some KRP properties to go as long as 8 consecutive years without showing any evidence of code compliance, due to the combination of inspections prevented by landlord no-show, required re-inspections not conducted following failed regular inspections, and regular inspections not conducted without any explanation;

  • continued each year to license KRP to house tenants and collect rent at properties that failed to demonstrate any compliance with the city housing code, including those properties that failed to demonstrate code compliance for extended stretches lasting up to more than 8 consecutive years;

  • as of September 14, 2022 had not inspected 3 of KRP’s 17 Athens properties since 2019 (with 1 of these 3 properties –37 First Street– not demonstrating code compliance since September 2018).

City Negligence: Code Enforcement & the Shafer Street Property

Specifically regarding the North Shafer ceiling collapse, we found Code Enforcement

  • failed to verify code compliance at 79 & 79 ½ Shafer for a more than 6-year stretch, lasting from at least January 1, 2008 until April 24, 2014;

  • continued to annually license KRP to house tenants and collect rent at the property throughout the above 6-plus-year stretch;

  • failed to verify code compliance for two more multi-year stretches, resulting in city regulators failing to ensure code compliance at the property more than 12 years of the total 14-year period we studied;

  • failed to conduct subsequent inspections in 2011 and 2012 after KRP’s failure to appear for both years’ scheduled inspections;

  • continued to license KRP to house tenants and collect rent at the property both of the years Krause failed to appear for inspections;

  • failed to conduct any inspection in 2013, the year that followed Krause’s consecutive annual no-shows in 2011 and 2012;

  • failed to conduct the required re-inspection after a failed regular inspection in 2017 noted problems with the ceilings of 79 ½ Shafer Street – the apartment where the ceiling collapse would occur 5 years later;

  • never revisited the ceiling problems identified in the 2017 Notice of Violation during subsequent inspections conducted in 2018, 2019, or 2022 (that is, 6 total inspections from February 2018 through July 2022, including 3 regular inspections and 3 re-inspections);

  • failed to cite the landlord for multiple housing code violations reported (and in several cases documented) by tenants in 2018, 2019, and 2022;

  • failed to identify numerous housing code violations in order to give the property a passing grade upon its July 26, 2022 re-inspection just 9 days before the August 4, 2022 ceiling collapse, despite some of those violations being reported to a code inspector by tenants on June 8, 2022, and despite some of those problems being noted by an inspector 5 years earlier in the 2017 Notice of Violation;

  • failed to cite KRP for failing to provide the required proper drainage of rainwater from the roof of 79 ½ North Shafer, thereby, in our judgment, making Code Enforcement partially responsible for the ceiling collapse;

  • failed the property at an August 29, 2022 inspection conducted barely 1 month after Code Enforcement passed the property at its July 26, 2022 re-inspection partly for violations that were present but not noted at the July 26 passing re-inspection; 

  • stated in its August 29, 2022 Notice of Violation that 79 ½ Shafer had not been inspected and would need to be inspected following repairs of the collapsed ceiling before the apartment could be rented to tenants again, yet then only 3 days later stating in a September 1, 2022 Re-inspection Report that all violations noted in the August 29 Notice had been corrected and that both 79 & 79 ½ had passed re-inspection, despite producing no record of 79 ½ ever being inspected between the time of the August 29 Notice and the September 1 Re-inspection Report.

Conclusion & Recommendations

While tenant testimony is always important, it is the city’s own extensive documentation of KRP that ultimately shows what a scofflaw slumlord looks like on paper. These abundant and informative city records clearly should have prevented Mayor Patterson from appointing – and Council from approving – Joe Krause to serve on the Athens Zoning Board of Appeals. For Krause to be appointed to the zoning board despite the city exhaustively documenting his abysmal track record as a landlord shows that either 1) the mayor and Council are failing to exercise due diligence in vetting candidates for board appointments, or 2) the mayor and Council are making appointments for precisely the wrong reasons. 

In light of KRP’s horrendous record as a landlord, including his long history of attempting to circumvent city housing regulations and endangering tenants’ lives, UACT believes appropriate steps should be taken immediately to remove Joe Krause from the Zoning Board of Appeals. Furthermore, we believe Joe Krause should never again be considered for appointment to any city board or commission.

More generally, we believe the mayor and city council should begin to appropriately vet all candidates for city boards and commissions, including by examining relevant city records that may shed light on a candidate’s fitness or lack thereof to serve in such capacity. In Krause’s case, the mayor and members of council had hundreds of such records at their disposal demonstrating that Krause was unfit to serve on the zoning board.The city possesses these types of records with regard to every city resident who is a landlord. Therefore, any landlord considered for such a position can, and should be, evaluated on the basis of such documentation.

In addition to UACT believing that extensively documented scofflaw slumlords should not be making city housing and zoning decisions, we believe that no landlord should ever be able to accumulate a record of disregard for housing safety laws anywhere near as extensive as Krause’s record and still be permitted to operate as a landlord within the City of Athens. We believe the city should not continue to issue new rental permits as a landlord dodges inspections and their properties go without evidence of code compliance for stretches of many years at a time. We believe that KRP and similar scofflaw slumords should be denied future rental permits at any property where the landlord has not first demonstrated code compliance. Finally, we believe landlords who demonstrate an excessive record of housing code violations should be barred from operating as landlords within the City of Athens

We recognize that much of the fault for this situation lies in the operation of the Athens Code Enforcement office. When it comes to our city’s rental housing policy, this is where the rubber meets the road. Time and time again, our study found that Code Enforcement failed to adequately perform its mission. But where does the blame lie?

While some of Code Enforcement’s inadequacy may be the fault of individual code inspectors and/or individual code directors, we do not believe this to be the root problem. The 14-year period we examined encompasses 2 different mayors and 4 different code directors. Both former Mayor Paul Wiehl and current Mayor Steve Patterson replaced the code director early in their first terms, yet Code Enforcement’s performance was terrible throughout the entire 14-year period we examined. This strongly suggests the fundamental problem is not individual city employees working at the Code Enforcement office but rather a more systemic failure. 

We believe the fundamental problem is that the city employs an insufficient number of rental housing inspectors. With between five and six thousand registered rental units making up roughly 75% of our city’s off-campus housing stock, and up to nearly 10,000 rental inspections (including re-inspections) per year during recent years, the city has employed just 4 rental housing inspectors during most of the period we studied, and for the past 3 years Mayor Patterson has allowed that number to decline by 25%, falling to just 3 inspectors. This workforce is grossly undersized for its workload. For rental housing inspectors to adequately inspect such a large number of rental properties, the city needs more inspectors.

How many more inspectors? Our full report covers this – and much else – in greater detail. Among many other features, our report includes a spreadsheet of compiled inspection data of Krause properties and links to all city records obtained through our public records requests. 

UACT firmly believes our report raises issues of extreme importance to our community. We urge local journalists to review our report and the records on which it is based, and to pursue your own investigations of the issues raised.


About United Athens County Tenants

United Athens County Tenants is an organization of tenants and housing justice advocates founded in early 2020 in the aftermath of a 2017 tenant union effort and the pro-tenant local electoral campaigns of 2019. UACT empowers tenants with a knowledge of their legal rights, discloses individual local landlords’ track records, shares tenant reviews of local landlords and rental units, connects renters with local support resources, and advocates passage of pro-tenant legislation at the local level. UACT organized a broad-based coalition of regional social justice groups to successfully urge Athens City Council to ban source of income discrimination in June 2021, and to pass new tenant eviction protections (“Pay to Stay”) in October 2022. For nearly three years UACT has monitored the municipal court docket to connect local tenants facing eviction with available support resources. UACT has organized educational workshops and panel discussions on tenants rights, affordable housing, preventing sexual harassment by landlords and utilizing “Pay to Stay.” UACT was nominated for the 2021 Athens News Best of Athens Readers’ Choice Award for “Best Civic/Service Organization” and received the 2022 Appalachian Peace and Justice Network’s “Dick’s Democracy Award.”