West Jordan Good Landlord Program draws enthusiasm

 (West Jordan Journal) The city is starting to implement the crime-fighting Good Landlord program

"We've made significant progress and we are well on our way," Sgt. Drew Sanders said at a presentation to the city council on Feb. 10. "As of this week, the police department has gone live with this and we are now in the process of ramping up so we can prepare for the influx of any problems that are going to be out there."

The police department has identified 1,200 possible rental units in the city, from which they have received about 600 responses to the program.

"As you can see, it's about 50 percent, which in and of itself isn't a problem. We've learned from other cities that that's pretty normal at this state," Sanders said. "And I think as a group, we've decided to take a very incremental approach and try not to jump in with both feet, but to try to take a very deliberate and incremental approach to this whole program."

The department has held nine Good Landlord classes with 287 participants.

"After the first 45 minutes of the meeting, they're real enthused about the training," Chief Ken McGuire said. "And each one of them, even the ones with tons of experience in doing the real business approach to landlord, have learned something through this process. So I think it's been very, very educational, very positive to the ones so far."

When a rental property incident is reported to the police department, officers decide whether or not the rental property is the source of the incident. If it is, the department will first handle it in the patrol and investigations division and then it will be immediately reported to the community oriented policing and crime prevention unit. That unit will coordinate with the business-licensing department and will notify the landlord.

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