The Deliberate Dismantling of Greensboro's Tenant Protections
A Calculated Failure; The Systemic Campaign to Silence Tenants and Gut Code Enforcement
The Core Argument in Brief;
The Strategy; Systematically filter cases, cancel meetings, silence testimony and strip powers to make the housing enforcement system functionally useless.
The Enablers; The City Attorney’s Office (Cubbage, Baker, Watts), the City Manager (Davis), Code Enforcement Chief of Compliance Larry Roberts and the Mayor (Abuzuaiter) executed the dismantling.
The Benefactor; Slumlords, via The Triad Real Estate and Building Industry Coalition (TREBIC), whose lobbying demands were translated directly into ordinance changes.
The Consequence; A deactivated enforcement apparatus that allowed substandard conditions to persist, disproportionately harming low-income renters.
The Cover-Up; Shifting, contradictory, and legally unsupported justifications for the changes, obscured through procedural maneuvers.
The evacuation at District at Market Street wasn’t an accident. It was the predictable result of a policy to shield landlord profits and manage a housing crisis on the backs of the vulnerable. The result is a gutted oversight system, leading to hundreds of unresolved complaints, overwhelmingly in low income multifamily apartment complexes.
The City’s “Inspection Process”, which is supposed to bring violations to the Minimum Housing Standards Commission (MHSC), but didn’t;
Greensboro Built a Bureaucratic Wall Between Tenant Complaints and Accountability
Even with the maximum extensions, the process from complaint to a final MHSC order should take roughly 115+ business days (about 5.5 calendar months). A case filed on January 1, 2024, should have reached its final procedural step (an MHSC order) by mid-summer 2024 at the absolute latest.
The procedural timeline shows “In Progress” cases from 2024 are stuck in a failed process.
Greensboro, North Carolina 01/01/2024 to 01/01/25 Open Code Violations Map;
Based on the city’s own stated timeline and procedures, the vast majority of housing code violation cases initiated between January 1, 2024, and January 1, 2025 which are still open and should have been resolved by now, is a major red flag indicating systemic breakdown;
All active housing cases up until June 30, 2025, 122 business days ago as of 12/30/2025, overwhelmingly most of which should have been resolved by now;
There are only a few possible explanations;
If a case required MHSC review (because the owner failed to comply) and the commission was stripped of its ability to act publicly or efficiently, then cases simply piled up in a queue with no resolution.
City staff and the council looks to have imposed prior restraint on the housing oversight process. By stripping the Minimum Housing Standards Commission (MHSC) of its independent inspection authority and canceling half of its meetings via artificially justified excuses, they appear to have proactively prevented the commission from investigating, witnessing or publicly questioning deteriorating conditions.
A conjured censorship.
Inspectors may be granting endless 30-day extensions based on minimal progress, letting negligent owners drag out cases without meaningful repair.
Sending cases to the MHSC for non-compliance has only been happening for owner occupied, single family homes set for demolition, not multifamily rental properties. The city’s policy of “withholding violations from the MHSC” left cases that should have been escalated were instead left in administrative limbo.
The Paper Trail Reveals Years of Intentional Neglect
The October 16, 2024, MHSC meeting transcript reveals frustrated tenants being silenced by procedural rules as they attempted to describe severe, ongoing housing violations. It doesn’t just illustrate the systemic failure; it provides direct evidence of bad-faith application of rules to silence tenants. City officials, acting under color of law, weaponized a procedural rule to deprive tenants of their First Amendment right to petition the government for redress of grievances.
That there was only one item handled by the commission at the same meeting reveals a housing enforcement system strategically reduced to a ceremonial role, processing only the most extreme and legally unambiguous cases while actively blocking the pathway to remedy for thousands of tenants living in substandard conditions.
https://www.greensboro-nc.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/61180/638690855618930000
The next two MHSC meetings were cancelled;
After dealing with another one item agenda on January 15, 2025, City attorney Tony Baker admitted, on the record, that the City was knowingly leaving tenants in dangerous units because fixing the problems were too hard and would expose a deeper affordable housing catastrophe.
Greensboro’s housing enforcement has not merely broken down; it was consciously deactivated. The city made a calculated decision to manage the symptoms of its purposeful housing failures by sacrificing the health and safety of its most vulnerable renters.
Despite a formal request by the Commission during the meeting for a full work session with all members of City Council, no such session occurred.
https://www.greensboro-nc.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/61760/638743679240300000
Internal documents, meeting transcripts and a gutted timeline reveal a years-long campaign that left thousands in unsafe housing.
The 2/19/25 meeting was cancelled. The 3/19/25 meeting had an agenda with one item but no minutes. The 4/16/25 meeting was cancelled. A special meeting on graffiti on a downtown building took place on 4/23. The 5/21/25 meeting was cancelled.
On June 18, 2025, the transcript shows members of the Commission escalating accusations of bureaucratic failure to alleged active suppression, detailing organized external interference and direct obstruction. Commissioner Samuel Hawkins explicitly referenced an “apartment/landlord cartel” operating within the city, suggesting potential collusion between private interests and public systems serving a profit driven agenda. Hawkins revealed a plan to address the issue during a City Council public comment period but was derailed after “statements... from a third party” were made to City Council. The formal request for a meeting with the City Council received no response.
Every avenue for redress; tenant testimony before the commission, the commission’s own actions and direct appeals to elected officials was rendered futile. This reveals more than passive neglect, but a calculated effort to shield inaction from accountability.
https://www.greensboro-nc.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/63236/638874923073570000
The 7/16/25 and 8/20/25 MHSC meetings were cancelled.
The 9/17/25 meeting attended by City Attorney Lora Cubbage, an anomaly, had no cases for the commission to judge. Operations Manager Jeffrey Kivette explicitly stated “for the last several years, staff was instructed that the Commission would only hear the worst of the worst cases. If it is not ready to be knocked down, don’t bring it before the Commission”, confirming the commission’s purpose was functionally eliminated in its role in enforcing repairs and habitability standards for the vast majority of violations, explaining the empty dockets and cancelled meetings.
City Attorney Cubbage interpreted the Commission’s empty docket as a potential “good sign,” overlooking the deliberate systemic filtering of cases. She repeatedly redirected commissioners to engage individually with their council members, a tactic fragmenting collective advocacy and reinforcing the strategy of isolation. Cubbage offered to facilitate a meeting with fewer than five council members in closed sessions to avoid public meeting requirements, rather than through a transparent, accountable process open to the public.
The City Attorney’s office functioned not as independent legal counsel for the Commission, but as an active instrument of control and intimidation to enforce a political agenda, through which landlords increased profits at the expense of their tenants.
MHSC Chair Franklin Scott’s testimony revealed a pattern of direct threats and calculated restructuring aimed at neutralizing the commission. During a training session, the previous City Attorney, Chuck Watts, explicitly threatened commissioners, stating he “was going to recommend to Council to replace...” any member who acted outside the city’s directives.
Certain commissioners were indeed replaced. Beyond personnel changes, the City Attorney’s office engaged in constant procedural overreach. Scott described ongoing battles where Deputy City Attorney Tony Baker and others attempted to directly run the meetings, transforming the attorney’s role from legal advisement into operational control.
Collectively, these actions paint the City Attorney’s office as the enforcement arm of a deliberate campaign to subdue the commission. Its role shifted from providing legal guidance to ensuring compliance through threats, purges and administrative domination.
https://www.greensboro-nc.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/64339/638950118800130000
In October 2025, the Howard Johnson motel on North O.Henry Boulevard in Greensboro was ordered shut down by a judge, culminating years of documented crises ranging from fatal overdoses to violent crime. While the closure addressed an urgent public safety threat, the case completely bypassed the commission designated to handle dangerous housing violations.
Instead of utilizing the MHSC, the City Attorney’s Office filed a civil nuisance abatement lawsuit. This approach proved effective for achieving immediate closure, but it left the Commission in the dark. Despite residents bringing well-documented life-safety violations, from faulty electrical wiring to inoperative smoke detectors to the City, the MHSC had no authority to intervene as the cases were never referred to the Commission by the city’s housing code enforcement apparatus.
A Coordinated Effort to Discredit the MHSC; Internal November emails reveal a premeditated effort by the City Attorney and Code Compliance’s Larry Roberts to frame the MHSC Chair as hostile, creating a pretext to justify restricting the Commission’s authority.
On 11/18/25, the last City Council meeting before six new members were sworn in, at the request of Triad Real Estate and Building Industry Coalition (TREBIC) President Jon Hardister and advocated by City Manager Trey Davis and the City Attorney’s office under Lora Cubbage, the Council passed an ordinance stripping the MHSC of core powers;
Given this pattern of inconsistent statements, lack of transparency and the significant negative impact on housing oversight, the ordinance changes were advanced under misleading premises.
Yes Weekly’s Ian McDowell reported;
At the end of the Nov. 19 meeting [the next day] of the Greensboro Minimum Housing Standards Commission (MHSC), Chair Franklin Scott described how Durham City Council passed an ordinance making it illegal for landlords to collect rent on apartments with health and safety issues. He expressed hope that the Greensboro City Council would do the same.
The next day, City Attorney Lora Cubbage emailed Mayor-Elect Marikay Abuzuaiter about Scott’s alleged rudeness towards Assistant City Attorney Brent Ducharme at that meeting. A month later, Abuzuaiter dismissed Scott from the commission.
...Former commissioners Tracy Furman, Andrew Young, and Que Brown allege that, at previous meetings, city attorneys have tried to stop commissioners from discussing what Furman called “things they didn’t want us to talk about,” such as more code enforcement against slumlords and supporting the N.C. attorney general’s lawsuits against companies that enable them.
As of December 9, 2025, the city had 381 active housing cases, yet 5 out of the 12 scheduled MHSC meetings were canceled, per an email from Senior Code Compliance Manager Christie Holt to then MHSC Chair Franklin Scott. 69 of the 381 cases were identified as multi-family complexes.
On December 16, newly sworn in Mayor Marikay Abuzuaiter, The same day The District at West Market apartments were evacuated, unexpectedly removed MHSC Chair Franklin Scott at the end of the meeting with a voice vote. Abuzuaiter sent Scott an email beforehand, Cc’d are Lora Cubbage, City Manager Trey Davis and Chief of Code Compliance Larry Roberts;
The Significance of the MHSC’s Dismantling;
If the MHSC was the primary effective channel for addressing serious code violations in multifamily housing and its powers were removed, the city functionally created a policy of non-enforcement for tenants most dependent on that mechanism.
Shifting and Contradictory Justifications; The City Attorney provided three different reasons for the changes; legal harmonization (Oct. 21-22), part of a pre-election departmental update (Oct. 23), and a standard, rotational ordinance review (Oct. 27).
These cannot all be true.
Collapsing Justification; If the primary justification was the city attorney’s office misrepresentations of state law, the city’s “legitimate interest” defense is severely undermined, if not invalidated.
No Identifiable Legal Requirement; Despite direct requests, the City Attorney failed to cite any state statute that conflicts with or requires the elimination of commissioner site visits or city-conducted rental market studies. The only law referenced (G.S. 42-14.1) pertains to landlord notices, not quasi-judicial board procedures.
Origin of Changes Deliberately Obscured; When asked who requested or initiated the amendments, Cubbage repeatedly refused to answer, stating only that it is “the lawyer’s responsibility.” This evasiveness is inappropriate for a change of this magnitude.
Perfect Alignment with TREBIC Lobbying; The two specific changes, ending commissioner inspections and halting city rental cost studies, mirror exactly the demands made by the Triad Real Estate and Building Industries Coalition (TREBIC) in the lobbying email above. This suggests the ordinance was shaped by special interests, not legal necessity.
Substantive Changes Improperly Placed on Consent Agenda; These were major policy shifts that reduce commission oversight and independent data collection. The original placement of the item on the consent agenda, one vote on multiple unopposed, noncontroversial items, was an attempt to avoid public debate and council scrutiny.
The next day, at December 17’s MHSC meeting, former Chairman Franklin Scott spoke from the floor as a citizen, and said “It is unfortunate that some have possibly forgotten that they work for the people,” Scott continued. “City staff works for the Commission, the residents of Greensboro; the members do not work for the City. The elected officials are in their roles because they work for the residents of the City.” He recalled the Commission was told by Attorney Cubbage at the September meeting that, “If you can’t do it, just resign.”
Scott recalled during training, when the commission presented a proposal to be taken to Council, they were told via a directive from the City Attorney’s Office and from the Chief of Compliance, that they could not.
The dismantling of the MHSC was not a bureaucratic reorganization, but a political strategy with a predictable and severe outcome. By strategically filtering cases, silencing tenant testimony, threatening commissioners and ultimately stripping the commission of its power at the urging of landlord advocacy groups, the city engineered a systemic withdrawal of housing protections.
The burden of this deactivated enforcement apparatus fell overwhelmingly on where the majority of the city’s low income multifamily rental stock is concentrated.
The claim of legal necessity was based on a misrepresentation of state law. The claim that enforcement would cause homelessness is an admission of a self-created crisis, not a legitimate defense.
Because the statements and actions of Lora Cubbage occurred in public meetings of the City Council and the Minimum Housing Standards Commission, they do not just raise policy concerns; they also raise serious questions under North Carolina’s Rules of Professional Conduct adopted by the North Carolina State Bar and approved by North Carolina’s Supreme Court, regarding candor in official proceedings, honesty in public representations, and conflicts of interest.
Rule 8.4(c); Dishonesty/deceit; Providing three incompatible public justifications for the MHSC‑stripping ordinance, while refusing to identify any specific state‑law mandate and obscuring the role of landlord‑industry lobbying, can be argued to reflect a pattern of misrepresentation and evasiveness that raises Rule 8.4(c) concerns.
Rule 8.4(d); Prejudicial to justice; Using threats of removal, procedural maneuvers silencing tenant testimony, and structural changes that rendered a quasi‑judicial housing body effectively non‑functional, can be framed as conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice, because it undermines the mechanisms created to enforce habitability standards.
Rule 1.7; Conflicts; The near‑perfect alignment of the ordinance with TREBIC’s lobbying demands, combined with city attorney Cubbage’s advocacy for those changes, supports an argument that her professional judgment for City Council was materially limited by responsibilities or relationships to a landlord‑industry third party, implicating Rule 1.7(a)(2) on concurrent conflicts.
A single thread connects all; a conscious decision to insulate negligent property owners and a failing housing policy from challenge, regardless of the human cost. The price has been disproportionately paid by low income residents, living for months or years in conditions the city officially condemns but refuses to effectively remedy.
Greensboro’s housing enforcement was not broken. It was deliberately and knowingly dismantled, and the consequences have been borne along socioeconomic lines.
Other Greensboro news outlets are still relatively silent on the turmoil at the MHSC, City Council, legal department and code enforcement. Absolutely nothing on The District, the MHSC or City Council from The Assembly’s Joe Killian, Sayaka Matsuoka or Gale Melcher to date, which is downright shameful.
Related;
Disclaimer; This article is an independent journalistic and advocacy work based on publicly available documents, meeting transcripts, maps, interviews, and the authors’ analysis and opinions. It is not legal advice, does not create an attorney‑client relationship, and should not be relied on as a substitute for consulting a licensed attorney about any specific situation. Any discussion of laws, regulations, or professional‑conduct rules is provided for general informational purposes only and may omit important exceptions, context, or recent changes; readers remain responsible for verifying how any cited authority applies to their own circumstances.
All descriptions of events, statements, and conduct by named or unnamed individuals or entities are based on information the authors reasonably believe to be accurate at the time of publication, but they are ultimately allegations, interpretations, or opinions unless and until established by a court or official body. References to “misconduct,” “violations,” “conflicts of interest,” “bad faith,” “intentional” or “deliberate” actions, “cartels,” “schemes,” or similar terms are expressions of the authors’ viewpoint drawn from the cited record, and are not formal findings of liability, ethical breach, or criminal wrongdoing. Individuals and institutions mentioned in this article are presumed innocent of any legal or disciplinary violation unless adjudicated otherwise in an appropriate forum.
Nothing in this article is intended to, and should not be read to, accuse any person of a crime or professional‑conduct violation as a matter of proven fact. Where the article suggests that particular conduct “may,” “could,” or “appears to” contravene specific legal or ethical standards, those statements are framed as advocacy arguments about potential implications, not definitive conclusions. Readers should understand that reasonable people, including courts, regulatory bodies, and the subjects themselves, may dispute the article’s characterizations, and the absence of a response or comment from any person or agency does not imply agreement with or admission of the article’s claims.
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References to ongoing situations, including code‑enforcement matters, housing conditions, and public‑safety issues, reflect conditions as understood at the time of writing and may evolve. Tenants, property owners, and public officials referenced in case examples are included for the purpose of illustrating systemic patterns, not to provide a complete factual or procedural history of any one case. Readers directly affected by the policies or events described, such as residents, landlords, or local officials, should consult qualified legal counsel, housing professionals or relevant agencies before making decisions based on the information presented here.
Sad. These are people.