you swear or affirm to tell the truth to hold you is nothing but the truth
i do please proceed counsel um mr glass you've heard my testimony so far today
yes i have and do you adopt it do you agree with it and adopt it as your own yes i do
all right um i'm going to uh walk you through a couple exhibits now um
we uh have proposed some provisos to uh the rto so i'm going to have you uh talk about this one
first um so um can you describe to uh the members of the board uh what this what the issue was with
the water heater and how you addressed it so there was the there's two there was two units
we had a water heater for each unit the third unit was feeding off this another unit in the building
so we ran separate plumbing and added a third hot water tank so they have they pay for the
hot water now all right and the wires that were dangling unsightly on the building's wall
we had our electrician come and clean up all the wires on the side and take them down
there was also a request to relocate the electrical meter and the circuit breakers
because they were located now in this new uh base above ground basement unit uh what what is you what
what was the uh the solution that you came up with and and what's the timing for that
well we had discussed it we brought my licensed electrician and he said it is legally it's legal
to have it where it is right now in the in the basement unit but uh if we can work on an agreement
then we can move the uh the the additional circuit breakers into the common area basement unit into
the uh utility room i'm sorry all right did you um did you uh hire uh an electrical contractor to
give you a bid on that yes i did okay is that the clean sweep two incorporated bid yes yes that's
correct so what um what was the cost um that to to do that relocation of of all of the electric uh
service for the house $4,500
excuse me $4,500
to do the service cable outside was an additional
$3,000 okay so there's like two pieces
of it and the total is $7,500 correct
so for that piece of the work
was it your preference to see
whether you could get this zoning permit
before you expended that kind of money
on the repairs?
That's correct, yes.
All right, now,
before we go to the RCO letter,
I just want to ask you some basic questions
about your role and your duties.
Mr. Chair, can I have Mr. Glass
elevated to panelists?
Actually, Mr. Glass,
do you have a camera do you have a camera on your computer i'm actually on my uh iphone right now
oh okay all right so if you prefer not to be uh not not to not to be seen that's
i'm all right if you're okay with that mr why don't you just question all right sure um
so can you describe your position and duties at odin properties
I am a property manager, and I oversee the Morekind Portfolio, Morekind Properties Portfolio.
Okay. And how long have you been managing the property at 1457 Sterling Street?
and how long have you been managing uh the property at 1457 sterling street seven years
could you tell the board what your duties and responsibilities are for managing the property
well we have on-site man not on site we have managers in in the area and i oversee the managers
uh i see i oversee the managers that manage the property they're on near near the on-site area
all right so would you be aware if there were any complaints that were received from neighbors
or about the tenants or the upkeep of the building yes i would and um have there been
any complaints that you know of in these past seven years about the neighbors or the building
yeah about three years ago we did get a complaint from the neighbors a few doors down
about the condition of the front lawn and some trash.
We did contact the tenants, and we did have it cleaned up.
That was the only complaint I'm aware of.
And that was, sounds like it was done relatively quickly?
Yes, yes.
So do you agree the property is currently zoned for two apartments?
Yes, that's correct.
And how long, if you know, has Pathways to Housing been renting those upper two apartments?
They've been there for roughly five years.
And also, I want to mention that they also have their own people that come and come to the property every two or three weeks to check on the tenants, their tenants, and check on the condition of the property.
So they have, you're saying regular inspections of the property?
Yes, yes, they do.
Okay. And was I correct that there's only one tenant in each of those units?
Yeah, they're both two bedroom units, but we only put one tenant in each one.
Okay. And do any of those tenants have cars?
They do not.
All right. Do you or your colleague, your coworkers, do you work closely at all with Pathways to Housing to address any of the issues with these tenants?
At Odin, we deal with Pathways.
We rent a lot of units to them, so we have a very close relationship with them.
The director is John Lambert, and yes, if there's any issues, we're told about it right away.
What is the market rate for an apartment rental in this neighborhood in terms of what would be a fair market rate for the two units that you're renting to Pathways?
1250 for each one 1215 1250 okay and what is the actual rent that you that you um
charge pathways for these units we're getting 900 for each unit there
so you are down uh 350 dollars each if we want to yeah if we chose to go market that's correct
Right. If you went market on those two units, would you expect that there would just be one tenant in each of those units, or would you expect that there would be more than one?
No, there would be two, possibly three in each unit.
and would you expect that they would uh based on all the different rentals that you do in this
area would you expect that they would be likely to have a car or two or or what would what would
your opinion on whether they would also have cars it's tough to say but i would say at least one of
them would probably have a car yes okay so mark and holdings is your is your
is the owner is the is your client for for odin um have they suffered any financial losses by
renting these two apartments below market to pathways i mean yeah if we decided to go market
he'd probably get another 600 hours a month
and two units right um so we've i think we went over that steve about the two units so
So now I'm talking about the third unit.
So my first question, Steve, could you ask them when that first unit was rehabbed and turned into a, the basement was turned into an apartment?
If you know, Steve, when was the basement converted from a garage?
And I think it might have been converted in different times, in different uses.
yeah at first it was used as an office and then we converted into an apartment and i was roughly
And then we converted into an apartment.
And that was roughly, I want to say, three years ago.
i want to
Three years ago?
But when it was first converted from a garage to an office, do you have an idea when that was?
I'm going to say about five years ago.
Okay. And is the reason, were there financial pressures on the owner? Is that why they were creating this third unit?
Well, yeah, sure. If we can get a third rent to compensate for the other two rents.
We do a lot with pathways and we try to help them out as a city agency.
So we would take a little less because they rent a lot of units throughout the city from us.
So we try to accommodate them.
That's why we decided to rent these two units to them under market value.
Right.
But I'm talking about the unit that we want to legalize today.
Is the reason that that was created because of financial pressures from the two pathways units?
Yes, that was part of the reasons, yes.
so if if today the board turns um us down for the variance uh will that put the two pathways
of tenants in jeopardy for for uh for future housing with this at this location i mean it
could have a consideration if pathways wasn't able to give us more rent we may have to put
an extra person in each unit in each of the units and get a higher rent for it
and that's that would be against pathways policies right yes they yeah the policy they
have now for the tenants they have in there they just put one in each unit of the units that's
correct okay um so let's go back to the um i do want to mention one thing too steve i don't know
if you mentioned it but the guy in the back who has the ground has his own parking spot back there
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did show that to the board. All right. So let's go through some of the falsehood of the Take Back Your Neighborhoods letter. In their letter to the board, they said that no additional systems were planned for the basement and the main circuit panels are uncovered and exposed and present a serious safety hazard.
and they haven't been addressed.
So can you, are you able to see what I'm sharing right now?
Well, we had a license, they did bring that up.
They said there's certain violations on the property.
So we did bring in our licensed electrician
to check everything out and everything was under code.
And if there was an issue,
Elle and I would have cited us when they did their inspection also.
Right.
Um, take back your neighborhood also said that, uh, that this, that making this third
apartment legal would reduce available parking spaces, uh, because it's only one vehicle
that's parked in the, in the back there.
Um, so, uh, can you confirm, uh, that pathways for housing tenders have no cars?
No, they have no cars.
And the gentleman who rents the basement has a car, but there's a spot, a deeded spot for him there.
So there's no impact at all on parking for the street.
That's correct.
Then to take back your neighborhood said that there were two windows that don't have that don't provide any adequate emergency egress.
And that there is not proper emergency egress from this basement unit, which is a significant risk.
and safety risks from uncovered circuit panels and a history of violations
and a history of complaints from the neighbors.
So can you respond to those?
Well, we discussed the electric.
We had the electrician who said everything was under code.
There is a second means of egress for the basement apartment to go out on the side.
So that's not an issue.
Right, because it has the two doorways.
Correct.
there's one in the front and it's also a rear entrance that leads to the outside that's correct
okay and you did clean up the wires correct that's correct yes and the only zoning the only code
violation that wasn't complied was that you need a zoning permit correct for the third unit that's
correct yeah okay um i think that's it for all of our i did i guess i wanted to show oh so
So on the tax clearance, we...
On the tax clearance, our client paid off the balance that was, there was a balance because there was an assessment appeal on a number of properties, but we paid that off a few days ago.
But it's not showing up as a clear tax clearance because Marcan Holdings has appeals on assessments, and so they haven't fully paid the higher rate because they're trying to avoid paying that with their appeals.
uh we have the feed for you uh for the property and we have yep our appeal uh application for
for appeal our project information form and our mailings that we did for that second
walkthrough which we called an in-person public meeting and site visit
um and the number of mailings that we sent out was 137
um questions from the board uh yes uh okay so what size unit is this about 500 500 square am
I correct? 400, 500, Steve? It was 14, 7 by 30.
It's 14. Mr. Glass, do you have a number, a square foot number? It's about 440 square feet.
Okay. Okay. And you have all of the buyer code issues that have been addressed? Yes.
To means of ingress and egress, the emergency lighting, we have all of that that we're seeing.
When L and I cited the property for not having for a new use and not having a zoning permit, they did not cite it for any fire code issues around the residence.
They also further attempted to cease that unit, and we appealed that and put a stop to that.
But in our conversations with Illinois, they conceded that there were no safety, life safety issues that they were concerned about.
It was simply the lack of a zoning permit.
And you say that you converted this property, this unit, three years ago?
it appears it was five years ago it was converted from a garage to an office and then three years
ago it was um they they installed you know amenities for for a living space the kit the
kitchen and uh that you know basically the kitchen area and you're uh this tenant is uh in this
property without a well i don't know what they call them now but basically a rental license
uh she has a this tenant has a um as a written lease um and as as do
right there are only two there are only two rental licenses for the two
pathways units and this does not have a rental license okay thank you the other questions for
the border is the current is that current unit being leased by pathways to housing resident no
it it is um it is leased um by someone who do who is not connected to any um any non-profit agency
they're they're they're they're they rented it on their own so so so it's just leased at uh whatever
value i guess they can get um to just kind of looking at the plan my one of my concerns is that
one it enters off of a driveway you know two is the amount of light and air natural light and air
that's um that's available to the unit um small window in the kitchen and a small window in the
bathroom there's no window in the bedroom and then the very little there's no window in the living
space so that's a that's a real big concern to me the other thing is you you literally enter off of
a side alley or a backyard. So that's a big concern. And I don't necessarily buy the argument
about the amount of money that the owner would be losing because what I've heard them say
essentially was that because Pathways to Housing leases a number of units from them
or throughout the city that providing these units at a discount rate is kind of what they would do
providing these units at a discount rate is kind of what they would do anyway so i don't know that
anyway. So
not having the other unit kind of makes a difference particularly since the other
unit you're not even running to a pathways to howling person well yeah i guess um mr glass
can you can you clarify that you were talking about odin as opposed to mark on when you were
talking about the pathways yeah well and and it's considered a studio so it's really one large
apartment and window everything in daylight in there it sounds like it's blocked off with
a bedroom with no light or anything as far as uh pathways yeah odin is does a lot of business with
um with pathways that's correct uh markheim this is the only unit that they lease um from pathways
so odin is the property management company and marcon is the actual property owner