Empty housing costing the state of Ohio millions
The Dispatch wroteEmpty housing costing millions
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
BY ALAN JOHNSON
Abandoned houses and vacant lots are sapping the life from Ohio’s urban neighborhoods and costing $64 million a year, according to a report released today that studied the problem in Columbus and seven other cities.
Three Columbus neighborhoods — Franklinton, Livingston-Driving Park and North Linden — accounted for 4,868 of the 25,407 vacant and abandoned properties in the report.
The toll includes $49 million in forgone property tax revenue — most of which goes to schools — and $15 million for a variety of city services, including code enforcement, demolition, trash pickup, grass cutting and fire and police runs. The impact of abandoned and boarded-up properties is nothing new to Donna J. Hicho, who sees them every day as executive director of the Greater Linden Development Corp.
“It’s not just a problem for people who live in houses and have closed them. … When we have boarded-up houses, that creates challenges for the other property owners on that street. They find it harder to sell their homes, to get renters and insurance.”
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February 20th, 2008 at 4:48 am
Two tidbits of information further down the article worth highlighting. The first is a valuable dose of perspective: for all that this is definitely a problem worth fighting, we’re right to jump on it early while it’s still a minor problem by comparison with other Ohio cities:
All things considered, it could be a lot worse for us.
Also:
I am truly, truly disappointed that the first two of these weren’t taken care of years ago. Considering that many of the tools to make such an inventory are literally free and could make an inventory not only complete but searchable by just about any number of different criteria, this shouldn’t even have taken too much attention or commitment to pull off.
As to the code enforcement, I think I’ve said this on these boards before, but it might bear repeating: they could very likely get code enforcement officers for free, too, in the same way that they get neighborhood or block watch groups together to form community-based crime prevention. If the city offered a program that allowed concerned citizens to volunteer 2-3 hours a week, just in their own neighborhoods, and then gave them training in how to recognize the 10 most common code violations only (whatever they are), you could increase your effective manpower by twentyfold. I think Columbus has about 50 paid code-enforcement officers. I don’t think getting 1,000 such volunteers would be outside the realm of possibility.
February 20th, 2008 at 7:43 am
That’s a good idea- the volunteer fix. I have an abandoned house next door to me and my neighbors and I have to do a lot of code enforcement, and gladly. But chasing homeless people out of the house is becoming more than we can handle, and it’s only one house.
The real solution will take either strong population growth (not ga hapa) or a lot of bulldozers.
I so wish Ohio could do something innovative with its economy, which is the biggest issue here.
February 20th, 2008 at 8:48 am
Hmmm … volunteers w/ dynamite? :twisted: :idea:
February 20th, 2008 at 9:38 am
I am convinced now more than ever that we stand in a complete void of innovation at this time- in Ohio… and, moreover, in Columbus.
Innovation void.
February 20th, 2008 at 9:44 am
You should run with that idea! Start sending out emails to council, the mayor, code enforcement officials, etc…
See if anyone bites. Wouldn’t be too difficult to throw together a powerpoint that lays out a plan and discusses benefits.
February 20th, 2008 at 10:53 am
Heh. Well, if it hasn’t happened already by the time I’m done in Canton, I may just take you up on that.
I’m at least going to look into it a little more and see if this has gotten any legal attention yet, since there would definitely be some legal issues (delegating a peripheral law enforcement power, but a law enforcement power nonetheless, to private citizens). I think it would pass muster, however, for the same reasons neighborhood watch groups do.
February 20th, 2008 at 11:35 am
This is the plank on which I’m basing my City Council run…
February 20th, 2008 at 11:38 am
This would get people’s beat down in some neighborhoods…
February 20th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
OK, I need to vent a bit here. Void of innovation… easy to inventory…
It’s easy to sling snowballs at Code Enforcement, and the infrastructure support there. How exactly do you all propose to “fix” this issue? Do people understand the process?
You say, it would be easy for a volunteer force of 10 individuals “helping” code enforcement in a neighborhood to go “fix” the neighborhood. How? So 10 individuals go walk around the neighborhood and call violations in to code enforcement. There is still only ONE person who actually goes to that property to write up a violation: the Code Enforcement Officer. He or she must write up the violation, post the notice on the door of the property, and send a certified copy of the violation to the property owner. And by property owner, it has to be sent to the person who is in charge of maintenance of the property. So if the property is owned by an LLC (Limited Liability Corporation) the code enforcement officer needs to find out who actually is in charge of the corporation. It can’t be sent to a mortgage company, or simply to a corporate entity… you have to locate the responsible party. Typically the owner has 30 days to take care of a violation. If the owner is taking action, they can typically ask for an extension of the time allowed for repairs. If the violation isn’t taken care of usually a second notice will be sent to alert the owner that a violation has been issued, and needs to be addressed. If the violation isn’t corrected, then the case may be taken to court. You can file in either civil or criminal court. Pick your court, pick your case, and pick your wait time, because the lead time for a case can be months. Then you have to get your paperwork ready for courts. All of the notices, certification that the notices were delivered, pictures of the violation, copies of the correspondence need to be collected and presented to court. If anything is missing, sent to the wrong person etc, the case might be thrown out, and the cycle starts over again. If the owners don’t have the money to fix the problem, then what are the options… put them in jail, or fine them for ignoring the violation? That’ll get the problem fixed. If the owner is a corporate entity, they might hire a lawyer to argue that the code violations are not applicable, need more time, etc etc etc.
Now multiply that problem by 700. And try to get that done in a 40 hour work week. While fielding phone calls from irate neighbors wondering why something isn’t being done. The Code Enforcement Officers know these problems are there. It isn’t a matter of knowing there is a problem… but it is a matter of having staffing to prosecute cases. That means hiring more Code Enforcement Officers, lawyers, clerks, and judges to move cases along. You gonna pay the taxes to do that? Or volunteer to do it for free?
And these 10 individuals who are walking around the neighborhood with clipboards calling in code violations… are *you* going to volunteer to do that? Knowing that your neighbors know where you live, and that your car or home might get vandalized for being the neighborhood narc… do you call code enforcement on your buddy whose gutters are messed up? or do you just call code enforcement on the 90 year old lady whose house is in disrepair becauce she’s living on social security and can’t afford to spend $7,000 on a new roof? Or the muslim guy who moved in down the street because he painted his house a color you don’t like? Did you ever watch “Flag Wars”? If not, I suggest you do. The woman who was featured in that movie lived on Bryden Road. She had some serious disabilities and substance abuse issues, and a home that was falling apart. Her neighbors were adamant that they didn’t want to see her homeless, so they were absolutely unwilling to call code enforcement to evict her from her family home… a home her family had owned for 50 years. Are you going to be the agent that breaks apart a neighborhood? There’s a lot of vigilante code enforcement that happens too… don’t like your neighbor because his dog takes a dump in your yard? call code enforcement because his house needs a paint job. 10 individuals don’t like how a landlord does business? Call code enforcement on his “vacant” rental property.
You say it would be easy to identify and list vacant structures. How? Pick the ones that are in tax arrears? What about the hundreds of families in foreclosure that live in those houses? Not all foreclosures are vacant structures. Drive around the neighborhood and look for buildings in disrepair? Not all of those are vacant either… Some combination of the two? So you create your list, and by next week, that list will be out of date. A portion of the buildings will have been sold and another group will be vacant.
The city has adopted strong vacant housing legislation in the past couple of years, and the legislation mentioned in the article should be fast tracked, clearly, to provide more flexible tools to assist code enforcement. Staffing shortages and backlog at the court level are the serious issues facing this problem. But due process MUST also be considered, since property rights and social justice issues are involved.
February 20th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
And PS… I think the differential in the amount of money spent on vacant housing between Columbus and Cleveland ($19 vs. $185) should tell you that Columbus is doing something RIGHT.
Sheesh.
February 20th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
This is kind of time consuming but:
Visit each abandoned home, see if the structure is sound, if not bulldoze it. Why are people so afraid to bulldoze buildings that have long ago served their purpose?
Looking at a recent historic building for sale in Franklinton, Dave and I went through the surrounding neighborhood and it didn’t look like anybody lived in any of the houses down there. This was the oldest part of Franklinton BTW. Most of them were boarded up, tiny little shacks. I say get rid of that crap. Whats wrong with adding greenspace instead of taking away?
February 20th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
HeySquare:
I was aware of most of what you said, and that’s why I identified the legal issue as delegating police power to private individuals, not just getting volunteers to report in violations (there’s no issue there … law enforcement agencies can field calls from tipsters all day, and that’s all the latter would be). I was referring to actually giving volunteers the power to issue citations, after proper training (which would hardly require the full police academy curriculum).
I think there would be people who would volunteer to do that, and willing to suffer the stigma of being “nosy.” The flip side of that is that they care enough to take an active role in fixing up their neighborhood. You mentioned it yourself: “irate neighbors wondering why something isn’t being done.” Those are precisely the people that one would target to recruit such volunteers. In fact, that’s precisely where I’d start looking, because you could have the person fielding the calls from such individuals tell them about the program and see who’d be interested.
The issue of getting more lawyers, clerks, and judges is much thornier. Much so. At least with respect to lawyers and judges. I’ll admit that. I would be willing to consider setting up administrative courts (similar to EPA or tax courts, i.e., bodies that look and act like courts but aren’t really part of the judiciary) to handle just these cases, but while that might streamline things, it would definitely mean more staffing requirements. Many lawyers want to be judges, even on less ambitious courts than the courts of appeals, but they still won’t do it for free. I’ll give you that. To the extent that the bottleneck is in the judicial side, not the enforcement side, volunteers would be less effective (because they’d just swamp the courts). However, courts actually can process a fair amount of these in a hurry because not many will come up for a full evidentiary hearing.
For example, a typical bankruptcy court or traffic court can run through a docket of 20 cases or more in under an hour. They only schedule full hearings when an issue comes up on the standard docket that isn’t open-and-shut. I think a “code court” could be set up to run similarly.
February 20th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
The City has already done that.
It’s called Environmental Court. And its docket is full.
February 20th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
I’d have to actually see what was going on with it before I took that at face value, though it’s good to know we have one.
The bankruptcy court here considers itself swamped, but really, it holds dockets about four times a month. It’s all the administrative work that bogs things down.
Administrative staff would obviously still cost money, but not as much as more lawyers and judges.
February 20th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
The City’s Home Again program proposes to do just that. But you need to actually have legal title to the property before you can bulldoze it. And that means, the property needs to be foreclosed upon, and due process served. That can take months, if not years, depending on the property situation. Perhaps it’s an abandonded house that was owned by a woman, who had 10 kids, and left the property to her 10 kids. Each of the 10 kids needs to sign off on the foreclosure, which becomes the responsibility of the city. It can often take a LONG time to gain title to a property.
Then the city is stuck with maintenance of a vacant lot, after absorbing the cost of demolition. Which can cost a LOT. And then the next door neighbors are up in arms because THE CITY isn’t taking care of the property, and drug dealers are hanging out in the empty lot. Parks and Rec have trouble getting manpower to mow Schiller park more than once every three weeks. Why would they want responsibility for thousands of scattered lots all over the city? It would consume HUGE amounts of the city budget.
Personally I don’t agree with the idea that wholesale demolition is the answer. You get into the problem that was facing the redevelopers in Franklinton. If you read the thread about building new housing in Franklinton, if someone does decide to want to rebuild on that empty lot, they are probably only going to get a minimum price, because all the the buildings remaining on the street are small and may vary in how well they are maintained. So you get the cheapest crappiest new construction available. And those houses deteriorate quickly too. So there is no net gain for the neighborhood.
This is basically a tactic that was tried in the 1960. It was called Urban Renewal. And it didn’t work– and by that, I mean, Urban Renewal typically created more problems than it cured. Vast tracts of St. Louis were demolished. As I believe were sections of Cincinnati. So the city becomes responsible for large areas of empty space, that it must maintain, and doesn’t collect taxes on. New developers prefer to avoid the issues of the inner city, and build on the outskirts of town. So the empty land sits and sits. It costs money to build parks and maintain open space. And to do that on land that was once valuable, taxable properties doesn’t typically help the financial health of a city.
Rehabilitation of existing buildings, combined with selected new construction, is typically the most economical, environmentally friendly, and successful strategy (and by successful, I mean, has been proven to work) for revitalizing a neighborhood.
And if you want an example… Victorian Village was one of the areas selected for Urban Renewal in the late 1960s. Does anyone think the Short North would be the successful destination neighborhood it is today if most of Victorian Village wasn’t there?
February 20th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Now that I’ve thought about it, the city already has the 311 system…
http://311.columbus.gov/COCOSR/COCOSR_SR.aspx
Just click “Code Violation” and it gives you the following options…
Maybe they just need to engage citizens a little more by publicizing the 311 system. It’s actually pretty cool.
February 20th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
HeySquare is so right. By agreeing to “volunteering” I was referring to simply being aware of what’s going on and letting the officials know the details and understanding all of those technicalities and laws she mentioned. Calling 311 is a great way to start doing that to start a log of complaints on file. After that, she is right, it is up to the officials who have limited resources, but being aware and proactive instead of letting things go for years and doing nothing helps nothing.
Still, I doubt if the police will be willing to come every day and chase crack-smokers out of the house next door to me. They came in 30 seconds last Saturday, guns drawn. I never thought I’d be in this situation with a house that is completely open and frequented by crack-head squatters in one of the most celebrated neighborhoods of the city. But I am. I can tell you how a vacant home can ruin the quality of life for everyone who lives around it. And believe it– my whole block has been very aggressive in letting the officials know, including the police, what is going on in the empty, wide-open house next door. The house, after four months, has finally been cited, but it stills sits, and I can still see the activity outside my window. No matter what, I’m sure that the process would be slower if not for our ‘volunteer’ spirit.
February 20th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
I think the more apt description is that urban renewal had some high-profile failures, such as the Poletown plant in Michigan and some dirtier areas of Washington, D.C.
The Arena District, however, is an example of urban renewal done right.
There was a lot more to rehabilitate in VV: the housing stock there, with so many beautiful and unique old Victorians, is markedly different than the housing stock in most blighted Columbus neighborhoods.
The foreclosure process does not need to be as long as it currently is and still protect the due process rights of property owners.
February 20th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
i just call 311 and report problems in my neighborhood. they usually have the problem fixed or looked at within a week.
if no one calls then the problems will exist.
so basically 311 is like a neighborhood watch that reports problems. just more people need to take advantage of it.
February 20th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
February 20th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
I’ve seen them.
But this issue wasn’t what they were, but how much potential they had.
Notice no one proposed “rehabbing” the jail that made way for Nationwide Arena.
I think a lot of people have emotional attachments to old things just because they’re old. Never seen the wisdom of that myself. Many of the houses in this town have stood for 80 years or more and have long since passed their useful life. Sinking more money into “rehabbing” them is like paying to keep a 1978 Buick on the road. At some point, it really is more cost-effective to junk the old rustbucket and get something newer. But some people just love their rustbuckets.
(Onion article I remember, just a headline w/ no story: “$500 Stereo Installed in $400 Car.”)
February 20th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
February 20th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
perhaps a well-placed match is the answer…
February 20th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
Actually, even windows and piping can be fixed. I’m more referring to either (a) houses with structural decay … much more than can be done by a thug with a wrench or baseball bat; or (b) houses that were never that good to begin with: tiny, cheap siding, etc. The things you see going for $40,000 and under and languishing on the market because no one will even pay that much, or getting auctioned at foreclosure sales and getting no bids. (The standard practice at foreclosure sales is to start the bidding at one-third under appraised value. Sad when you don’t even get that much, but it happens. More and more, in fact.)
February 20th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
I look at some of these abandoned houses and salivate. A beautiful, huge old home with amazing architectural detail can be bought for under 100K. And they’re close to downtown. But if the neighboring houses are all boarded up or in disrepair, the value of the extensive work you would have to do to live in one of these is diminished tremendously. And I’m not keen on living in a neighborhood where gunshots can ring out without police checking up on it. It’s tragic. But I think we’re getting there in Columbus. Little by little, people are investing in urban neighborhoods and renewing them.