SYRACUSE, N.Y. – Calvin James paid $9,877 to the city of Syracuse over six months to keep the city from seizing his house for back taxes.

He paid off all but $936 of what was needed to save his North Side home.

But Syracuse seized it anyhow.

James walked into city hall Dec. 6 prepared to pay $1,500. A clerk in the finance department told him to keep his money. The property had been seized Dec. 4.

“I nearly fell off my feet, I was so stunned,” James said. “I tried so hard. I tried so hard to make these payments.”

The two-bedroom bungalow at 118 Delong Ave., a dead-end street off First North Street, is assessed at $38,000. James bought it in 2009 for $8,500, according to property records.

James is among roughly 140 property owners whose houses, commercial buildings or vacant lots have been seized under an aggressive new foreclosure program launched by the city of Syracuse in November 2012. The city conveys the properties to the Syracuse-area land bank, which sells them to new owners or demolishes them if they are beyond repair.
 

City officials have vowed to seize all of the 3,500 properties that have delinquent taxes if the owners don’t pay up. But they also have made special efforts to work with owner-occupants in an effort to help them resolve their debts and keep their homes.

Calvin James slipped through the gaps in that effort.

Now James is asking the city to give him a break, to let him pay off the taxes and keep his house. City officials say no. They’re sorry about the way things worked out, they say, but James missed an agreed-upon deadline to pay.

“This guy was given all the proper notifications and just came up short,” said Paul Driscoll, commissioner of neighborhood and business development. “It’s not something that I think that we’re going to request the land bank to return.”

James has been allowed to stay temporarily in his home, paying $500 a month rent on a month-to-month lease. His new landlord, the land bank, listed the house for sale at $26,729. At least a couple of potential buyers have already looked at it, James said.

James, 61, moved to the United States 30 years ago from Guyana, on the north coast of South America. He settled in Brooklyn, where he worked as a bus mechanic. Nine years ago, he suffered a bad leg injury that took a year to heal and forced him to leave his job. That’s when he started thinking about Syracuse.

James had relatives who had lived in Syracuse, and they told him the city’s real estate was dirt cheap compared with Brooklyn. Like many Downstate investors before him, James plunged into the Syracuse real estate business — and quickly got into trouble.
He cashed out his retirement savings from the bus mechanic job and paid $38,000 in 2009 to buy four houses in Syracuse. Two were habitable, two were boarded up.

A year ago, James partnered with his son to buy a fifth house, also boarded up, for $8,000.

Some of the properties James bought, including 118 Delong, came with unpaid tax liens from previous owners. Right from the start, James was tax delinquent. Several of his properties also have outstanding code violations.

Plans for renovations stall

James said he intended to use the rest of his retirement savings to fix up the houses and pay off the taxes. For extra income, he also started a one-man home remodeling business called Caltech Homes. He also gets $750 a month in rent from one of his houses.

But the plan fell apart soon after he bought the houses, when James’ father was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. James said he brought his father to Syracuse from Guyana and spent much of his savings on medical treatment before his father died. The houses languished.

In April 2013, James received a notice from the city that he owed more than $11,000 in back taxes on 118 Delong Ave., and that he had 30 days to pay up or he would risk losing the property to tax foreclosure.

At that point, James made a calculated decision to abandon his three boarded-up houses, if need be, and to put all his money into saving his residence on Delong and his income property at 414 E. Brighton Ave.

Between May and October, James paid nearly $10,000 on the Delong house, drawing in part on a small inheritance from his father. Over the same period, James paid more than $4,000 in back taxes on his Brighton Avenue rental property, he said.

In late October, after making a payment on the Delong Avenue house, James received two phone calls from city hall. Sheldon Ashkin, then first deputy finance commissioner, told James that his payment had narrowly averted a tax foreclosure that had been scheduled for that month, James said. Stephanie Pasquale, deputy commissioner of neighborhood development, called next to ask James about his intentions for 118 Delong.

James told her he was living in the house and planned to come in soon to pay off the $936 tax lien from 2011 that made his house eligible for seizure. He told Pasquale he planned to pay it by Nov. 15. He didn’t get there until Dec. 6.

“If he called her back and said he was going to come up Dec. 6 and pay, we probably would have held it,” said Driscoll, Pasquale’s boss. “But we never heard from him.”

Special treatment for homeowners

Since the foreclosure program began, city officials have tried to treat owner-occupants with kid gloves. Homeowners who receive foreclosure notices are invited to seminars and urged to meet with foreclosure counselors. A nonprofit agency, Home HeadQuarters, lends qualifying homeowners money to settle their tax debts.
City officials even go door-to-door to contact homeowners and to try to help any who are able to enter repayment agreements.

None of that happened with James, because city officials thought he was an absentee landlord. Until August 2013, the address on file for James at city hall was in Brooklyn, which James said is the home of a relative. His other Syracuse houses are stilled listed under a Brooklyn address.

James said he moved into 118 Delong Ave. in late 2012, after a tenant moved out. He has copies of utility bills, bank statements and satellite TV bills from that period in his name.

In any case, city officials were informed in October that the house was his residence. James said he can’t afford to lose it.

“I tried so hard,” he said. “I mean, that’s all my retirement money.”

Contact Tim Knauss at tknauss@syracuse.com or 315-470-3023 or on Twitter @TimKnauss.