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Residents criticize city’s tracking of abandoned properties

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john hopkins vacant homes 04 09 2012
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John Hopkins says he moved to Virginia Street in the Old West End about a year ago for the historic charm of the neighborhood. But the house right across the street is deteriorating and empty — except for the raccoons.
THE BLADE/JEREMY WADSWORTH

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John Hopkins has lived on Virginia Street in the Old West End for about a year, and he’s caught only glimpses of the people living in a once-grand, but now derelict, two-story home across the street.

Given that they are out mostly at night, come in and out through a hole in the roof, and they are raccoons, it’s not surprising to him that the sightings are rare and that the house is falling into ruin.

“I moved here for the historic charm of the neighborhood [and] problems like that don’t help,” Mr. Hopkins said. “Thankfully there are organizations trying to remedy that problem.”

The house at 629 Virginia is in a neighborhood that was already wrought with vacant, boarded-up, and abandoned homes before the national foreclosure crisis erupted. Although it has been empty and deteriorating for at least seven years — according to the owner of the property next door — it is not on the city’s vacant-house registry.

Many houses that sit empty are not on that list.

The city enacted its legislation in 2008 to require vacant houses to be listed on the public registry, with the owners paying annual fees unless they post for-sale or for-rent signs in front of the building.

The most up-to-date list, provided by the city in September, 2011, has 1,881 properties. When the city finally released the list last year, it was nearly two months after The Blade had first asked for it.

Mayor Mike Bell’s office could not provide an updated list last week.

A Blade review of the registry shows that many of the vacant houses are in some of the city’s higher-crime areas.

But crime is not the only by-product of vacant housing. They also are popular dumping grounds for old tires, officials said.

Unfortunately, most of the city’s uninhabitable properties are near occupied homes.

One of ways the city learns about a vacant house is after it burns down. But cross-referencing the registry with the list of Toledo vacant-house fires shows even more vacant houses not recorded. Since 2008, the city has had 1,137 vacant-structure fires. Four vacant houses on Western Avenue caught fire in 2010 alone — two years after the registry was started — and none was on the registry.

Judy Stone, a real-estate agent who owns 627 Virginia, blames the banks and the city for not tracking the problem better.

‘Remove everything’

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629 virginia vacant home
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The property at 629 Virginia has been vacant for years, according to a neighbor, but it is not on the city’s public registry. Most of the city’s uninhabitable properties are near occupied
homes.
THE BLADE/JEREMY WADSWORTH

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“It seems like people used to go out and mine for gold and silver and now they mine for copper in homes,” Ms. Stone said.

“It is just unfortunate with bank foreclosures when they go in and clean out the place after the previous owner moves out, their instructions are to remove everything.”

The majority of owners listed on the registry are banks. A company named American Home Mortgage holds 125 of those 1,881 properties; American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc. is listed as the owner for 69 others; Case Home Finance LLC has 95, and Fannie Mae has 93. A company called Bac Home Loans Servicing LP holds the most, 375 vacant homes.

Ms. Stone said the common practice by banks is to order all window treatments removed and a sign posted that states the home is vacant — which is an invitation to criminals and vandals.

“I don’t think the list is used enough and there is not enough follow-up on it,” Ms. Stone said. “From my perspective, the north end, which has some great housing stock, seems to have been hit the hardest.”

In Toledo, and many other rust-belt cities, abandoned buildings are a perennial problem, especially in neighborhoods such as central Toledo, the Old West End, the Old South End, East Toledo, and Library Village.

Critics say the list is woefully inadequate and represents just a fraction of the actual number of vacant and blighted homes in the city.

Widespread problem

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3434 rushland avenue vacant home
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This house at 3434 Rushland Ave. was vacant when a downed tree limb went through the roof a year ago, leaving a hole that is now covered with a blue tarp. The West Toledo property should be on the city’s list, but it isn’t.
THE BLADE/JEREMY WADSWORTH

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Although streets like City Park and Western avenues offer views of boarded-up and obviously vacant houses, no corner of the city is immune from the problem.

A quick walk through West Toledo can reveal multiple vacant houses that should probably be listed but are not. They include 3434 Rushland Ave., which was vacant when a downed tree limb last year went through the roof, leaving a gaping hole that is now covered by a blue tarp.

City Council President Joe McNamara acknowledged such nuisance homes lower property values and increase others risks, such as fire and crime.

“I think we haven’t used the registry to full potential because there are a lot of vacant homes that don’t get put on the list,” he said. “The absentee owner who maybe is speculating, maybe he pays the taxes and does nothing to maintain it, and then the home deteriorates and affects the neighborhood.”

He said the goal of the list was to create a penalty for doing nothing with a property by having to pay the fee.

“Maybe we need to look at the fee and what the penalty is. We definitely need to do a better job of seeing how houses get on the list,” Mr. McNamara said. “With all the changes the administration has made with inspections and the neighborhoods department, I am not sure who is managing this list.”

Broad exemptions

Mr. McNamara also said the exemptions are extremely broad.

“If the gas is on, it is not considered a vacant home. If you are trying to rent it or sell it, it is not considered vacant,” he said. “The problem is huge because it threatens to destroy the fabric of our neighborhoods and it is complicated because at the end of the day it goes back to jobs, and we need to have more jobs for people to live in the city of Toledo and own homes.”

Lourdes Santiago, director of the neighborhoods department, did not return telephone calls seeking comment.

Mayor Bell said the city is tackling the problem and pointed out that it razed 411 units, “a record number of vacant homes last year,” and that his administration is on track to do that again in 2012.

The city tore down 352 units in 2010, 263 units in 2009, and 300 units in 2008.

Under the city registry law, the fees increase the longer a house is on the list.

Fee structure

The owner of a vacant home as of Jan. 1 each year must pay $100 for residential buildings that are vacant at the time of the filing. The top listed fee in the law is $3,000 for those vacant at least six years, plus an additional $500 for each year in excess of six years for the first four units of a multifamily residential building and $60 for each additional unit beyond eight.

Toledo Councilman Paula Hicks-Hudson last week proposed changes to the registry law.

“We want to try to expand it to pick up those properties that may be vacant because of foreclosure actions,” Ms. Hicks-Hudson said. “We want whoever is the lawyer who files the foreclosure notice to provide notice to the city that they filed. That is not the case now with the city.”

In Lucas County, foreclosures spiked in 2009 with 4,160 cases. There were 3,839 in 2010 and 2,946 in 2011.

“I would say there are hundreds of vacant homes in District 4, and some people would say there are 1,000 or so, so it is just God-awful,” Ms. Hicks-Hudson said.

A 2011 investigation of lender-owned properties in four metropolitan areas conducted by the National Fair Housing Alliance, the Connecticut Fair Housing Center in Hartford, the Miami Valley Fair Housing Center in Dayton, and Housing Opportunities Made Equal in Richmond found that banks often maintain properties in white census tracts and in some racially and ethnically integrated census tracts better than properties in predominantly African-American and Latino neighborhoods in the same metropolitan area.

Kathy Broka, president and chief executive of the Toledo Fair Housing Center, said banks are not held responsible for dilapidated homes.

“So many of the programs are driven by participation, and if the banks don’t buy into it, then none of these programs are going to work and that is certainly the situation with the registry,” Ms. Broka said. “The city doesn’t have the manpower to go out and canvass neighborhoods to see which ones went into foreclosure.”

Contact Ignazio Messina at: imessina@theblade.com or 419-724-6171.

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