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| No one home: Bernice Roberts and Joe Strotter board up their Atlanta property until it's rented. Erik S. Lesser/Special to The Christian Science Monitor |
Vacant homes spread blight in suburb and city alike
Amid housing bust, foreclosures vex communities trying to hold dereliction and crime in check.
from the July 1, 2008 edition
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Farther down Drummond Street, a vagrant moved a bed, a bureau, and other furniture into a boarded-up bungalow, and eventually started a fire that nearly burned the house down, say Joe Strotter and Bernice Roberts, owners and managers of the property. They've now found a tenant but are waiting until move-in day to replace stolen appliances. "People watch, and when they see a house stand empty for a while, they either empty it out or move in," says Mr. Strotter.
Boarded-up homes are an expensive problem for Atlanta, which has already posted "no trespass" signs at as many homes this year as in all of last year. Vandals break in and pilfer copper wire and kitchen fixtures. Then vice moves in, including prostitution and drug dealing. In Charlotte, the overall crime rate has remained flat, but crime in several new but mostly empty suburban areas rose by 33 percent from 2003 to 2006.
In one Atlanta neighborhood, speculators who can't sell homes they'd hoped to "flip" pay homeless men to stay in the dwellings to watch over them. With 11 code enforcers laid off because of budget cuts, Atlanta police are working overtime to patrol blighted streets. "The responsibility is falling more heavily on our shoulders," says Atlanta Police Maj. Joseph Dallas.
That has mayors like Jerry Abramson of Louisville, Ky., worried – and a bit mad. Mayor Abramson calculated that his crews, in one month, spent $102,000 to mow lawns, fix gutters, and empty green pools at foreclosed properties. But even after putting a lien on a property – which should be paid out when the place finally sells – cities seldom collect on those debts. Abramson picked up the phone and called lending executives at Wells Fargo and Countrywide himself to, only half-jokingly, demand repayment.
"All of a sudden what dawned on me was that taxpayers were protecting the assets of banks and mortgage companies," Abramson says in a phone interview.
How cities are coping
Local ingenuity is offering some hope, says Jim Brooks of the National League of Cities (NLC) in Washington.
In Trenton, N.J., city officials asked priests, imams, and rabbis to make congregations aware of new public and private efforts to help people stay in their homes rather than letting them slide into foreclosure.
In Flint, Mich., a new land-banking program allowed the city and county to leverage $2 million worth of investments into $35 million worth of renovations on derelict foreclosed homes – an innovation other cities may replicate.
Wilmington, Del., has started ticketing property owners quickly for code violations, instead of using the traditional code-enforcement ritual that can take months to complete.
And Pembroke Pines, Fla., is weighing whether to assume mortgages on delinquent homes occupied by renters, so the home won't end up standing empty.
In Washington last week, the Senate cleared the way for a mortgage-relief bill that includes $4 billion to help cities buy and refurbish foreclosed properties.
The White House, however, has threatened to veto the bill over that provision, saying it's an expensive earmark that will primarily benefit the very lenders who loaned money rashly.
The debate is expected go to into July, but experts agree that Washington will play a major role in how cities deal with growing inventories of dark-windowed homes.
"It's fair to say there's a window of opportunity here, with the force of local grass-roots efforts coming from the bottom up and some assistance from Congress and states coming from top down," says Mr. Brooks at the NLC. "That's the policy you'd want, and when they meet, good things happen. We need them to meet now."
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