A new push to crackdown on blight in San Jose has left a couple stunned and angry after receiving a citation for a dresser and exercise bicycle that they say were temporarily on their porch.
Targeting blight is one part of an overall city cleanup effort started by Mayor Matt Mahan. The Focus Area Service Team, or FAST, focuses on blight and has targeted six neighborhoods with a high rate of complaints. The couple was cited on the week of Jan. 8.
"No one ever heard of it. We didn't even get a notice in the mail," cited homeowner Fitzroy Leslie said of receiving a $250 fine without a warning.
Leslie said the items on their porch were only put outside temporarily while their daughter was visiting over the holidays.
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"Normally if something like that you get a notice in the mail saying 'Something is on your front porch. You need to move it or we're going to cite you.' We haven't got anything like that," Leslie said.
Leslie and Katie Wyatt own and operate the Spicy Roy's Caribbean Grill in San Jose. The couple is not only trying to keep their local business running, but are also dealing with hardships, including a death in the family.
"We spent all our money on that. We can hardly find any money to cover our mortgage," Leslie said. "And the city doesn't know our struggle, our situation, and they send us a letter in the mail that's a citation for a piece of furniture on our front porch."
NBC Bay Area reached out to Mahan about the situation and provided the following solution:
"I'm going to offer to pay that family's fine out of my own pocket," Mahan said. "And then I'm going to work with city staff to redirect this program, so, we can get it focused on the forms of blight that are most negatively impacting our community, particularly in our downtown and commercial districts."
The family is grateful about the mayor's decision to pay the fine and revamp the program.
Editor's note: After this story aired and was published on Jan. 12, the city provided further information clarifying the FAST program and information about the timeline for delivering citations. Here are some of the details the city provided in an e-mail to NBC Bay Area:
Roughly 3-4 weeks before inspections, we used certified mail to send notices to all tenants and property owners in the focus area to be inspected. Multilingual notifications are also posted at the bottom of our webpage, www.bit.ly/SJ-FAST.
We added a strong message to the envelope to encourage recipients to open it.
Our outreach included:
- Reaching out to neighborhood leaders and council offices to help amplify the notification.
- Holding webinars in which residents could ask questions.
- Social media publicity, including on Nextdoor, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. In the case of Nextdoor, we've been publicizing the issue of exterior violations citywide (garnering more than 11,000 engagements on those posts) and also targeting the specific FAST areas with specific info about the inspection/citation dates.
