Richmond property owner Lawrence may serve sentence on home confinement
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Oliver Lawrence in 2007. P. KEVIN MORLEY/TIMES-DISPATCH
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Home at 1016 Oakwood Ave. in Richmond. TIMES-DISPATCH
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Home at 2007 Albany Ave. in Richmond. TIMES-DISPATCH
Convicted slumlord Oliver C. Lawrence could serve his 70-day jail sentence in home confinement.
The city of Richmond is asking that Lawrence, the owner of Bayou Properties, be ordered to live in one of his now-vacant, boarded-up homes in Church Hill North or Blackwell.
General District Court Judge Barbara J. Gaden today considered a motion for home confinement filed by Lawrence's attorneys, but she did not make a decision.
Lawrence is scheduled to report to the Richmond City Jail on Tuesday following last week's sentencing, which included new and previously suspended fines of more than $177,000 for more than 180 convictions on property-maintenance violations.
Assistant City Attorney Greg Lukanuski said the city is willing to support home confinement as long as Lawrence is required to live at a home in Church Hill North or in Blackwell that his company owns.
For more details from today's court hearing, see tomorrow's Richmond Times-Dispatch.
-- Will Jones
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Reader Reactions
Hey Oliver,
Remember when you hired me? And, I quit the next day! Let’s see, maybe I could tell then you were a fraud!
I hope you enjoy your time living with no running water or electricity!
Loser!
All slumlords should held accountable and in this case I don’t believe that the penalty is hard enough. In addition to the sentence he receives the state should also stop slumlords from any further rental of property.
He should be confined to his most blighted property. It would probably be worse than jail anyways.
Lawrence is a good example of the undercurrent
that has kept Richmond in the sagging status it has suffered
over the years. He is part of the sloth and backwardness that
is an embarrassment to the City. No doubt he even
dreamed of one day getting developers and taxpayers to
restore and beautify his vainglorious flops—as others
have for their own.
Regardless of what the Court decides, the City’s primary interest should be collecting the fines he’s been assessed, recovering whatever expenses his unconscionable activities have cost the City’s taxpayers, and, to the extent permitted by law, seeing that the properties are either made livable or demolished. Not being an attorney, I don’t have the answer, but I hope that given the degree of his neglect, the law permits seizure and disposal of the neglected properties by the City.
He should serve home confinement in one of his many condemnable properties.
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