Property managers in Ames will soon be able to enroll in a program to become certified as crime-free.

The Ames Police Department has been holding meetings with various property managers in Ames while training individual officers in the Iowa Crime Free Multi-Housing Program. Ames Police has been looking at implementing the program since 2005, but criminal behavior in the past fall has created additional interest in such a program.

According to the Iowa Crime Free Multi-Housing Program handbook, the premise of the program is simple – “keeping illegal activity out of rental property.”

The program examines rental properties, assesses security weaknesses and offers solutions to bolster whatever problems exist. Lighting outdoor locations well, keeping hedges trimmed and improving relationships between property managers and police officers are all issues the program focuses on.

Ames Police hopes every property manager in Ames will be in the midst of training by this summer.

Currently, two of the 11 property management firms in Ames have said they are interested in joining the program.

Harry Samms, community resource officer for Ames Police, said the ultimate goal of the program is to implement a sense and feeling of community. Improving community relations is a goal the Ames Police has been trying to rebuild since such disruptions as the Veishea riots in 2004.

“It’s just a real obvious extension of community policing,” Samms said. “The goals are reducing crime, and the ways we are doing that is improving communications between property managers. We provide them with the statistics so that they know, day-to-day, what is going on.”

Samms said property managers often do not know when police officers have been called to any of their properties. He also said one of the benefits to the police officers is that they’re not always being called to the same rental properties repeatedly. Instead, the property owner is able to “police themselves” and to identify criminal patterns they want to look out for, Samms said. He said the program is not about punitive damages to renters and is not about cracking down on partiers – it’s simply trying to keep dangerous elements out of properties.

“We’re not looking to get rid of the parties,” he said. “That is not what we are going after. We’re going after the true, personal safety of renters from drugs and violence.”

The Crime Free Housing program has three phases.

Phase one is an eight-hour training program in which property managers establish rapport with officers and learn about the civil nature of rental communities.

A certificate is awarded after completing the first stage. Samms said Ames Police will be working with landlords to clarify lease agreements in regards to criminal background checking.

“We work together to tighten up their leases, so that they do criminal backgrounds, so they don’t allow people with drug histories, people with violent crime histories, to live there,” Samms said. “It’s not the perfect cure-all, but the criminal histories, taken together with the better communications, has been proven to reduce the crime rates significantly.”

Phase two, called crime prevention through environmental design, is viewed as the environmental aspect of the program and analyzes the general outside appearance of a building and makes recommendations to fix problems. Recommendations include the addition of deadbolts on all entry doors, viewfinders in doors, anti-lift/sliding devices on sliding doors and windows, strike plates, adequate lighting and proper trimming of bushes, said Ames Police Sgt. Rory Echer. These measures have been proven to reduce crime in other areas of the country and in all other police departments, he said.

Property owners are required to make the appropriate changes themselves, which could be seen as a monetary hurdle to some owners, he said.

“There are some steps that they have to go through, and there is a little bit of a cost with changing things like lighting, locks that need to be changed in apartments,” he said. “There is some cost there. But in the long run, it is going to be more beneficial.”

The third phase, called full certification, entitles owners to post a sign outside of their properties stating that the residence is a part of the Crime Free Housing Program. A social gathering is held by the property managers, bringing officers and owners together to explain the program to tenants.

Background checks are a required by the Crime Free Housing Program.

Those with criminal backgrounds, especially drug-related or violent-crime backgrounds, will have to go through background checks to be permitted by property owners. Those who qualify for a Section 8 voucher “have already passed the Crime Free Housing standards,” said Ames Police Chief Charles Cychosz. Section 8 standards are set by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Landlords’ consistency in performing background checks must be enforced across the board, Cychosz said. Those who have just left prison for violent criminal behavior or drug distribution charges are usually “living in transitional housing” for four to five years – by that time, a person would be allowed to be under Section 8 in Iowa.

The core of the program is not discrimination in housing, Cychosz said, but property owners under Crime Free Housing can set higher standards of who they rent to. Cychosz said Ames Police actively discourages denying leases based strictly on criminal backgrounds.

“You can’t discriminate against any individuals at any step of the process,” he said. “However, we cannot tell landlords who have been certified to set higher standards. But there is a flexibility built in the program to allow anyone with a criminal past. Chances are, if they have passed Section 8, they will pass Crime Free Housing standards.”

The Iowa Fair Housing Guide, written by the Iowa Civil Rights Commission, does not address the denial of leases to those with criminal backgrounds. Property managers have the discretion to deny housing based on prior criminal background, said Vanessa Baker-Latimer, housing coordinator of Ames.

“There are two separate things that Section 8 screenguards against, which is violent crime and drug activity, regardless of Crime Free Housing or not” she said. “Landlords can set their own standards to suit their complexes. It is their decision to if they want to utilize another level of screening.”

Barbara Woods, extension special program manager of the family and consumer sciences extension and co-chairwoman of the Inclusive Community Task Force, said the possible denial of a lease based on any sort of background is “discrimination.” However, she said, the general aim of the Crime Free Housing program is to keep communities, children and renters safe and is good for Ames. Woods encourages implementing the program in a way that “landlords can understand by law who cannot be permitted.”

The program was introduced to Iowa by the West Des Moines Police Department in 1998, and West Des Moines has had “great success” with the it, said Jeff Hartshorn, West Des Moines Police special operations unit officer. Hartshorn is West Des Moines Police’s designated officer for the program.

He said a majority of properties in the Des Moines areas, including townhouses, rentals and larger complexes, have seen a decrease in “all categories of crime,” he said.

“Drug and noise complaints – we’ve seen a decrease in all of them,” Hartshorn said. “It has been a benefit.”