By LEO V. KAPLAN
Posted Wednesday, August 27, 2025 7:02 am
After two Freedom of Information Act requests by City Pulse for a list of red-tagged properties from the city of Lansing were denied, the Schor administration reversed itself and sent the list last week.
The list supports Mayor Andy Schor’s assertion that the number of red-tagged properties are down.
There are 652 properties on the list, which was obtained Aug. 20. That number is down by 17 from January this year, the last time the list was made public. According to the city’s website, it’s down 87 now compared to December 2024, but there’s no list accompanying that number.
Schor and Economic Planning and Development Director Rawley Van Fossen believe that’s a good thing. However, it’s more complicated than a single statistic.
“If you have your utilities shut off, you have a red-tagged house, even though that house is not necessarily dangerous or a blight,” Schor said. “It just means nobody can live there.”
He said some properties can stay tagged indefinitely because they are unoccupied and not dangerous, while others are the target of immediate enforcement, making it difficult to ascribe a meaning or cause to a mere increase or decrease in the number of red-tagged properties.
“I can’t say we’re going to knock down your property for no reason other than it’s red-tagged because there are no utilities,” he said. “If a dangerous one comes up tomorrow, then that dangerous one jumps one that’s been on the list for eight months that is not dangerous.”
So, with a list that fluctuates for many reasons and includes crumbling old houses side-by-side with simple fixes, why is the administration proud of the decreased number?
Schor said improvements in the code enforcement division’s operations combined with decreasing red-tagging made him confident in the city’s progress.
“If we have increased enforcement and the list is going down, that means there’s more properties that are in good shape,” he said.
A primary cause of that “increased enforcement” is that vacant positions in the division have finally been filled. Van Fossen said there were “five or six” enforcement officer vacancies when he took his role in December 2023. Now, he said all those positions had been filled on top of adding a second lead housing officer and fifth premise officer.
His time in charge first coincided with an increase in tagging. In January 2024, there were 553 red-tagged properties in the city, which had increased by nearly 200 by the year’s end. With more officers in the field, he said, “we’re likely to see some more enforcement.”
He said a general cause of the current decrease is “owners stepping up and making repairs to their properties.”
City Council President Ryan Kost is more cautious in his optimism.
“The number has gone down, but it hasn’t gone down enough,” he said last week.
He said he believes the code enforcement division should implement more efficient practices, including using tablets or laptops with internet connectivity to report compliance issues, rather than the “pads of paper” he saw them using in spring, meaning they have to return to the office for manual data entry.
Van Fossen said last week such a practice had been implemented.
Another issue, Kost said, is underreporting of unsafe houses, both by owners and tenants. While an unsafe property being tagged ensures landlords do not rent it out, prospective buyers are also less likely to buy and rehab a red-tagged property because of the monthly fee and the restrictions on work hours. He also said tenants are sometimes hesitant to report code violations if they have nowhere else to go.
While red tags can be issued during annual rental inspections or after the Police or Fire Department responds to an issue, Van Fossen said that complaints are commonly how inspections begin.
Kost also commented on the process by which the list was obtained. The list was once easily accessible, and City Pulse initially sought it to help inform its “Eyesore of the Week” feature. After being told it did not exist, two Freedom of Information Act requests were denied on the grounds that the list did not exist, even though the information existed in the city’s database in raw form. Van Fossen and Schor acknowledged concerns with releasing the list, including vandalism and potential squatters, but they both maintained that the FOIA requests were denied simply because a list of red-tagged properties is not an existing record, which is permissible under state law.
Kost, who also does not have access to the list, said City Council should receive it.
“Unfortunately, without that list, a lot of the time we don’t hear anything until we get a very angry neighbor living next to a situation house with no one in it that’s falling apart, and they’re like, ‘Where’s the city?’” he said. “That list gives me the opportunity to be proactive, at least in the ward I represent.”
That push for proactivity was shared by Schor’s November opponent, Kelsea Hector, who said the city’s approach is “still too reactive” despite improvements in recent years. She said her approach to red-tagging would focus on proactivity, including a public-facing housing dashboard to cast a light on landlords with previous code violations and expanding assistance for low-income homeowners to keep their homes off the list.
Alongside continuing and expanding assistance for low-income homeowners to keep their homes off the list, Hector champions a public-facing housing dashboard to cast a light on landlords who do not keep up their properties.
“We should be able to see the landlords who repeatedly put tenants at risk and those that are working in good faith to make sure issues are fixed,” she said.
Schor also emphasized an approach focused on helping low-income homeowners with upkeep and launched a housing rehabilitation program to do so in April.
With over 100 Sycamore Townhomes properties set to undergo extensive renovations in the next year, the list may continue to decrease. But with an aging housing stock, which Van Fossen called a “well-known” issue, upkeep of compliant housing will be necessary to maintain that trend.
“It’s not a desire or goal of the administration to red-tag more properties,” Van Fossen said. “It’s one of those things we have to do if the safety concerns present themselves. But what I like to see are those longer-term solutions.”