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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.”
Related Stories:
- Columbus tackles vacant houses
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.”)
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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?
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.
Oh-oh. Them’s fightin’ words to HeySquare! :lol: I’ll bet she’ll be posting some photos of Harrison West, Vic Village, Italian Village, German, back in the bad old days.
There are some severely blighted neighborhoods with seriously beautiful structures in them. OTE – we looked at three old mansions all under 100K – but all had busted out windows, fire damage, missing pipes and wiring. South side, east of Parsons – lots of the same basic housing stock of German Village and Schumacker Place, but lots of abandoned homes, boarded up windows, overgrown yards, etc.
perhaps a well-placed match is the answer…
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.)
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.
Are you sure she didn’t live at the corner of Winner and Eastwood? And if the neighbors weren’t calling code enforcement on her, who was? She was in and out of environmental court in the film.
People in OTE have no problem calling code enforcement on anyone, regardless of age, race, or sexual orientation. It’s one of my biggest gripes about the neighborhood. Instead of knocking on someone’s door and asking them to fix the problem, a call to code enforcement is made.
Regarding the Flag Wars house
This woman’s house was actually on Winner a block or so behind the Broadwin Building. As many times as she was shown in court for code violations you’d think they accomplished something. But no, now some corporation owns it and it is even worse than it was during the Flag Wars movie. In fact it is now boarded up and completely unmaintained. It goes to show that code enforcement obviously does not apply to those who can afford to fight it. In the case of that house it really honked me off that they pestered that woman until after she died with code violations yet here we are today and the house looks worse than it was when she lived there.
I’d rather have a neighborhood where people were overzealous than completely apathetic, however.
Also, given what HeySquare was talking about earlier–the fear that your tires might end up slashed if you were known to be the person who called code enforcement (OK, not her exact words, but the gist of them)–a certain reluctance to confront neighbors directly might be somewhat understandable for the time being. You never know who might have a friend named Remington sitting around.
Also keep in mind that it’s the owners that bear the responsibility to fix up properties. For many houses in disrepair, the people living there aren’t the ones responsible, because they’re only tenants.
That is very true. I think renters take pride in where they live, but they are not going to be replacing windows on a house, fixing the roof & gutters or keeping the exterior paint nice.
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.”)
1. The housing stock in Franklinton isn’t fundamentally any different than Italian Village. The potential is there.
2. There were actually a LOT of people that didn’t want to see the jail go down. I didn’t live here at the time, so I can’t speak for myself, but I know a bunch of people who advocated an adaptive reuse of the building. If I’m not mistaken, the material of the main facade of the building was taken down, not demolished, and stored somewhere. I think there is an old baseball stadium thread that contains the information. But it was a jail, and a lot of people have emotional issues that prevented the reuse of the building.
3. The demolition of the jail is a different animal than the vacant housing in residential neighborhoods– large scale public building being replaced by a large scale public building. Moreover, the jail was demolished with *a plan and FUNDING* in place for reconstruction. Demolition of residential buildings without any plan for construction of new residential is what the worst of urban renewal was all about.
4. If you think you are getting a better product by buying a “new” building, well, maybe you are… and maybe you aren’t. A good friend of mine is suing the company that built her condo because it is structurally unsound. Her brand… new… condo.
5. The Onion article… if you installed a $500 stereo into a $400 car, and then afterward, someone paid you $1500 dollars for car, would you do it? Because that’s kind of like what rehabbing a house is… you buy a $40,000 property, put in $50,000 in improvements, and sell for $110,000. And more importantly, you’ve “created” affordable housing for a young family… a family that can’t afford $180,000, which is what it would have cost for them to buy a comparable new house.
6. The structural components of a house don’t move, and with proper care, don’t really wear out. You aren’t going to get better quality “new” wood today than you got 100 years ago when most of the houses in Franklinton were built. And depending on the quality of the wood purchased, it might be significantly WORSE today than what you got 100 years ago. So just because the siding or the paint on a building looks like junk, it doesn’t mean the structure underneath is crap.
And just for the record I am, clearly, an advocate for historic preservation; however, I don’t think everything old is fantastic, or have a nostalgic yearing for times long past. But in the absence of a funding plan that will create infill housing in urban neighborhoods, I firmly believe that the best chance for improvement in these neighborhoods is not demolition, but rehabilitation.
This woman’s house was actually on Winner a block or so behind the Broadwin Building. As many times as she was shown in court for code violations you’d think they accomplished something. But no, now some corporation owns it and it is even worse than it was during the Flag Wars movie. In fact it is now boarded up and completely unmaintained. It goes to show that code enforcement obviously does not apply to those who can afford to fight it.
It doesn’t necessarily mean that… but the wheels of justice can often move v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y.
But seriously, you may want to call 311 and ask for an update on the building. Sometimes things can fall off the radar if the neighborhood doesn’t continue to check on progress. At the very least, you should be able to get some concrete information on what the current status of the violations are.
But what would you say to a developer who disagreed with you on that?
Also, structural components do wear out with time, or, perhaps more accurately, by being exposed to the elements for longer, they’re more likely to have encountered the one shock that would push them past their breaking point. Structural decay *does* happen.
If you could put $50k into a $40k house and sell it for $110k, that does sound nice. But what if you’d only get $80k for it, and you could demolish the house for $15k, spend $115k putting up something else there, and sell it for $180k?
I think if houses must be removed we should consider alternatives like deconstruction and recycling.
If that property was in Franklinton, you’d probably be looking at $130K in debt. Or you’d be living in Franklinton, cause I doubt you’d get $180K for anything there.
I took a look at the assessor’s web page to get an idea of what property in Franklinton is assessed for. I couldn’t find one single family residential property assessed for more than $150,000. The vast majority of housing was below $100,000. A significant portion was below $50,000. (to be specific, I reviewed the area south of Broad and north of Sullivant from the river west to 315.)
So if you sink $15K into demo, and $115K into a new build (Motorist… what would $115K buy us in terms of a new build, do you think?) I think you are going to be so far above the average property price that you might not be able to sell the property for what you put into it, let alone make a profit on it.
If those were the numbers, then I’d be all for renovation.
I’m just up for whatever will make the greatest improvement in tangible property value. I’m neither a fan of renovation nor demolition/reconstruction for the sheer sentiment of the thing; I don’t have any objection in principle to either. I just don’t like that many people (here, but not just here) seem to think that renovation is the way to go just because it’s renovation, even if you’d get a better return on demolition/reconstruction.
In other words, I think the market should be free to work. If renovation gets the better returns, then people will gravitate to that naturally without being pushed.
I’m going to rant a bit on this one too, in my current job I have worked on vacant property initiatives in Detroit (the Mecca of vacant properties) for years. I’m with heysquare on this issue, its not as simplistic as it sounds. Its definately an issue that attention, but there are not easy fixes.
If you are really going to get aggressive with vacant property reutilization, you need a comprehensive and very well funded land bank program (yes Columbus has a land bank, but its not comparable to those found in other areas). Flint, MI currently has the most innovative land bank in the nation at this time. Cleveland did at one time, but the vacancy issue has overwhelmed its capacity. Plus Michigan’s land bank fast tract act of 2003 enabled programs there to do things untried here in Ohio.
Flint’s program is run by the county but run in direct coordination with the city, in addition the Mott foundation has funded the land bank to proactively plan on how to acquire and colectively resuse those properties. (The St. Louis example cited earlier is very true, uncoordinated demolition was so wide spread that a huge public health hazard was created due to the amoung of construction of debris and asbestos released in the air). Also, attempts to give parcels to nearby property owners resulted in properties just reentering tax delinquency when the new owners couldn’t afford the additional tax burden.
…and the issue of cataloging vacant properties. It’s not that simple, I still can’t find anyone in Detroit who can give me an accurate estimate of how many vacant parcels exist in the city (those estimates range from 50K to 90K (or how many the city actually owns – those estimates run from 30K to 45K). This fact is so ellusive, I get emails on a constant basis from folks at Wayne State, U of M and others in Michigan looking for this same information.
• Inventory all vacant and abandoned properties. This should be a city and state collaborative effort.
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.
My guess is that there is some sort of inventory for the big cities, but pulling it all together takes too much time and effort for depts already overworked. The City of Columbus does have an inventory of vacancies. I’m not sure how often it is updated, and it may not be very searchable, but it does exist. Now if it is open to the public or not, that’s another story!
It is sad that there is not better use of current technology, but it’s not that surprising. Most cities are under severe budget crunches. Most code enforcement officers are not hired for their skill at manipulating databases/GIS. (Not trying to insult anyone, just that you aren’t going to use that on a daily basis in that job.) Most city depts have IT/GIS/tech departments that are a few years behind – not the latest software, problems with file mgmt, etc. And then of course coordinating with other cities, that always seems to be a problem!