The Crime Free Housing Bureau is preparing for its formal review this spring.

The Crime Free Housing Bureau is run by coordinator Carl Leoni.

City Council will receive a review of the program in late February or early March.

“I look forward to that report coming to City Council in the spring, and we will assess the fine tuning of the DeKalb program,” said Mayor John Rey. “All indications are that the program is progressing.”

Leoni said the goal of the bureau is to form a partnership between the police and the rental property managers to keep units crime-free.

“We work with the landlords to make their properties crime-free by getting criminals out, and we also do maintenance inspections,” Leoni said.

Leoni said inspectors look at the outside of the buildings: the roofs, the siding and the windows.

Leoni said there are 8,800 rental properties in the city. Leoni said rental properties make up 56 percent of the housing in DeKalb, and since the formation of the Task Force and the Crime Free Housing Bureau there have been 55 evictions.

Rey said the housing ordinance that DeKalb passed is a four-part program that consists of disorderly house, crime-free lease, registration of landlords and the inspections of the properties from the sidewalk.

“Education of the landlords is part of the program,” Rey said. “Carl Leoni has a curriculum that is currently being conducted with landlords.”

Courtney Warren, a Suburban Apartments employee, said she believes the initiative is having a positive effect on the rental properties and their tenants.

“At Suburban its called the Quiet Community Policy,” Warren said. “It’s definitely had a positive impact on the properties at Suburban. We’ve had maybe one eviction since I’ve worked here.”

Leoni’s office also goes through daily reports to see if any crimes were committed on DeKalb rental properties by tenants or guests.

From there, it notifies the landlord and the landlord has to notify the Crime Free Housing Bureau of how he or she handled or are handling the problem.

“They can choose to evict them at the first offense. That’s up to the landlord; some properties might have a rule or something written into their leases now,” Leoni said.

Leoni said if the landlord has been contacted and has done nothing after the third time a tenant has committed a crime.

Then the landlord faces fines. Leoni said since the beginning of the task force, there have been about 400 cases brought to the landlords, and no landlord has been fined.

Fines range from up to $750 for a third violation and up to $1,500 for subsequent violations.

Leoni said his office hosts six-and-a-half to seven-hour training sessions for the property managers.

“We discuss everything from the ordinances, crime prevention, the application process, how to take advantage of some of the ways to check background of the lessees for free,” Leoni said.

Rey said he will attend a February education class for the landlords.