Shortly after Steve Morrow first bought his apartment building on Brown Street in 1985, he witnessed a man being thrown out of a nearby window.

More than 20 years later, however, Morrow said the atmosphere on Brown Street has changed. Violent episodes like the one he witnessed are rare. New property owners have been moving into the neighborhood, and with them has come a new sense of pride.

Some of those residents, though, are now becoming frustrated that the drinking, drug use, vandalism and crime have not disappeared. They have started to complain to the city in recent weeks about rundown buildings with unruly tenants. The city has begun to investigate changing its building codes to force landlords to be more responsible for the behavior of their tenants.

Years ago, the neighborhood known as “Frenchtown,” because of the primarily Franco-American population of mill workers living on the street, took a turn for the worse when the mill downsized and mill workers moved out. The neighborhood developed a reputation as a home to poverty, drugs and crime. The neighborhood bar, Andy’s Tavern, was notoriously one of the roughest in the city.

In recent years, the neighborhood has begun to move away from that reputation. According to many people, the turnaround has largely been the result of efforts by the Frenchtown Community Association, which has organized neighborhood cleanups and served as a community watch group. Working with the city, the Peoples Regional Opportunity Program has built condominiums there to bring in residents who are invested in the neighborhood.

Because of these efforts, many property owners on Brown Street have indeed taken a greater interest in improving their neighborhood. However, some say there are still some property owners who are not taking an active role in maintaining and improving their property.

“People who own things and people who live in the area are really putting in an effort to improve their properties and improve the neighborhood,” said Steven Bacon of the Frenchtown Neighborhood Association. “But there are buildings that are really rundown and different from other buildings where people are moving in and taking care.”

It’s easy to see why some say the influx of new ownership has brought a pride and care to the street it was lacking for years. One afternoon last week, three contracting crews were working on Brown Street, evidence that some owners are working to improve their properties. Many of the houses along the street had fresh paint, new siding and uniform shingling on the roofs. Many of the lawns had mowed grass, gardens and trimmed bushes.

Mixed in with these homes and apartments, however, were buildings in need of maintenance. In some places, the grass was long and unruly, the bushes overgrown and wild. Debris laying around some yards included broken chairs, children’s toys and even old mattresses. Some front porches were dilapidated, chain-link fences were broken, and the paint on the siding was weathered and chipped.

According to people living in the neighborhood, as well as police, it is these buildings that are the focal points for the lingering troubles along Brown Street.

‘Doesn’t feel safe’

The majority of people living on Brown Street are “regular,” working-class people with jobs and children. It’s only a small proportion of the population causing the problems, according to Ellen Hurd, a licensed social worker who lives on Brown Street and does counseling from her home.

Hurd said she regularly sees groups of people hanging out on sidewalks, smoking and swearing and calling to cars passing by. Almost daily she’s bombarded with loud rap music. She’s seen people using illegal drugs, drinking and throwing beer cans and other garbage onto lawns.

She said she’s also seen a number of young children on the street who are not well-supervised by adults. The overall atmosphere around these buildings takes away from what Hurd said has the potential to be a very nice neighborhood.

“It doesn’t feel safe for people who live there and who have businesses there,” she said. “It doesn’t feel safe to walk through a big pack of people.”

Hurd said she has young women for clients and doesn’t feel a young woman should have to walk through a crowd of men, some without their shirts on, swearing, smoking and drinking.

Jeanne Paterak of King Street said she’s seen people being arrested while she has been walking or driving down Brown Street, but contends the fault lies with landlords, not tenants.

She said buildings on both sides of her are owned by absentee landlords who, while profiting from the rentals, are not contributing anything to the city. Paterak said police are regular visitors to the apartments depending on the tenants, who change frequently.

“Other than a lack of policing in the area, which perhaps is part of the problem, the bigger part is the landlords,” Paterak said. “What I see as the biggest part of the problem are the landlords that don’t actively maintain or monitor their properties.”

Police Chief Paul McCarthy said police have identified certain buildings as more troublesome than others and those problem buildings tend to be owned by absentee landlords. However, neither Paterak nor Hurd feel the police are doing enough to solve the problem.

“I haven’t been impressed by the patrol in the area,” said Hurd. “It seems to be more reactive than proactive.”

Both Paterak and Hurd feel the people of the neighborhood have come to expect a certain amount of unruly behavior because of the neighborhood’s history.

“People in the neighborhood tolerate a lot because it’s Brown Street,” said Hurd.

‘A nuisance is now magnified’

Rundown buildings and tenants with little or no interest in their neighborhood seem to go hand-in-hand. Police are looking to residents for help keeping an eye on what’s going on in their neighborhood. Police are encouraging neighbors to call when they see things they don’t think belong in the neighborhood.

“The most important thing for neighbors to do when they are having problems is to report the crime when it happens,” said Capt. Tom Roth of the Westbrook police. “This gets the ball rolling and creates documentation of problem areas, so that they may be concentrated on.”

The police have already increased their presence in the neighborhood as part of a plan to patrol regularly during the summer months, including the addition of plain-clothes patrols in unmarked cars. In response to the recent complaints by property owners, Roth said he has advised officers to concentrate on the trouble spots during their patrols.

Roth said he has also been in contact with at least one landlord whose tenants have caused trouble, and, in response, the landlord has begun the process of evicting those tenants.

Although Westbrook does not have an ordinance on its books regarding unruly tenants, the administration has asked the City Council to look into options and will investigate if other communities in the area might have such regulations.

“The city will do research to identify other communities that have regulations in place, talk to them and see what their experiences were, what worked and what didn’t,” said City Administrator Jerre Bryant.

Bryant also said he believes there are more owner-occupied buildings in the Brown Street neighborhood than in past years, and one way to encourage owner occupation is to have controls in place to prevent trouble from transient tenants.

“The more people down there that are owners, the more concern they’re going to have when there are activities that are not conducive to the neighborhood,” Bryant said.

City Councilor John O’Hara believes it’s exactly because there are more owners in the neighborhood that absentee landlords are more noticeable. He said it’s not like the Brown Street of even five years ago when the city and the Westbrook Housing Authority and the Peoples Regional Opportunity Program began to clean the area up. He said now problems are magnified.

“I believe the area has improved,” he said. “A nuisance is now magnified because of the changing face of the community.”

Morrow agreed, saying when he moved in eight years ago he couldn’t even park his boat outside his apartment for fear of vandalism or theft. The yelling and screaming of domestic violence were commonplace.

He said he rarely saw people jogging or walking, but now people do those things regularly and often stop to chat. “Now it’s a neighborhood,” he said. “People are interacting and talking and interested in what each other are doing. It’s nice.”

Potential solutions

O’Hara said he doesn’t plan on letting the good trend slow or reverse itself. “The amount of sweat and energy that’s been poured into that area, we can’t let it go backwards,” he said.

Bryant said there might be several options for the city to better control potential nuisance tenants. One of those is language in each lease that outlines grounds for eviction for disruptive behavior.

Bill Barter, who owns a building across from what he considers a troublesome building on Brown Street, said he has worked clauses into his tenants’ leases for years that are designed to prevent tenant problems and give him recourse if problems occur.

“Tenants are evicted if they or their guests are caught smoking anywhere on the property. No one can stay in the building for more than five nights unless they are approved in advance or are added to the lease. It is a violation of the lease to place trash on the curb on a non-trash day, et cetera, et cetera,” he said. “We are really hardcore about our five-page lease, but it is designed to avoid problems that devalue the property.”

Barter said he lived in his building for four years until two months ago, when he moved to Brunswick, so he’s technically an absentee landlord. But he said he has excellent tenants.

An option for the city would be to require landlords to include specific language in their leases such as Barter does. Another option would be to change city ordinances, which Portland has done to address similar problems.

According to Portland city code, any building that is visited by police eight or more times in any 30-day period for problems such as those documented recently on Brown Street is considered a “disorderly house.” Once a building is labeled a disorderly house, the owner is required to meet with the city and take measures to fix the problems within one week of that visit. If the owner doesn’t comply, the city can file a complaint in district court against the owner and reserve the right to condemn the building.

Residents are hoping that the combined efforts of residents, police and the city will ease the problems and help Brown Street continue its evolution from a problem neighborhood to a model one.

“It’s about feeling safe and creating a feeling of safety,” said Hurd.

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