Pioneer Press missing part of the story.
Posted on Mon, Sep. 25, 2006
If nobody's home, trouble comes calling
St. Paul's spike in vacancies threatens neighborhoods
BY JASON HOPPIN and MARYJO SYLWESTER
Pioneer Press
Ali Dahir, 17, a student at Humboldt Senior High School, walks past a boarded up house on the corner of East Minnehaha Avenue and Bradley Street in St. Paul Friday.
More photos
Sunday: These homes were lost … and that's just the beginning
A map of St. Paul shows vacancies throughout the city, but concentrations in Payne-Phalen and Dayton's Bluff.
Five homes sit empty at an intersection in St. Paul's Railroad Island neighborhood — foreboding, boarded-up omens of a community teetering on the brink.
Broken glass glitters on a stretch of sidewalk in front of the East Side homes at Bradley Street and Minnehaha Avenue, near the geographic heart of the city. A Dumpster in a driveway overflows with what once were a family's belongings — an old couch, some chairs, a child's toy.
In scattered clusters, the scene is repeated across St. Paul, especially in the city's poorer neighborhoods, where there are many rental properties. In the past five years, the number of vacant St. Paul buildings has more than doubled, an alarming trend that, in some areas, threatens to unravel years of rising property values.
The reasons are many and the solutions few. A softening housing market, questionable lending practices and neighborhood crime all have contributed to the problem, while federal funding for rehabilitating urban cores has dwindled.
For people who invested in the neighborhoods, who bought homes and spent their hard-earned money fixing them up, the trend is unsettling.
"My immediate concern is the two houses across the street. They've been vacant for almost a year," said Elmer Heutmaker, 39, a Dayton's Bluff resident for 18 months, adding that one of the homes has been broken into. "My wife and I just hope and pray that someone decent moves in."
The situation has caught the attention of the mayor and the City Council, which will hear about the extent of the problem at its Wednesday meeting.
The burning question is what to do about the vacancies and foreclosures. Absent a huge rebound in the real estate market, the problem seems destined to linger. And the longer buildings remain vacant, the harder they are to keep from becoming blight on the neighborhood.
"It decreases the values of the surrounding homes, and it creates a sense of abandonment," said Mike Anderson, executive director of the East Side Neighborhood Development Co., one of a handful of St. Paul nonprofits that piece together public and private funding to revitalize neighborhoods.
A DOWNWARD SPIRAL
St. Paul's 766 listed vacancies put downward pressure on all aspects of their neighborhoods, from home values to the public's perception of its schools. When that happens, families become more reluctant to move in, hastening the downward spiral.
The vacancies disproportionately affect poor neighborhoods and those with a high number of minorities. Three-quarters are in neighborhoods where incomes are less than the citywide average, according to a Pioneer Press analysis of city records. Barely a quarter of St. Paul neighborhoods have predominantly minority populations, but those areas account for 43 percent of the vacancies.
Fueling the phenomenon is an escalating number of foreclosures that appears to be partly the result of nontraditional home financing, such as high-risk loans and adjustable-rate mortgages, which became popular during the go-go days of the real estate boom.
And there is widespread speculation that many investors in rental properties simply got in over their heads.
"They used collateral on this one to buy that one," City Council President Kathy Lantry said. "And when they start falling apart, they lose them all."
But there's evidence that not just first-time homebuyers and investors are losing their houses. According to City Council researchers, 46 percent of citywide foreclosures came after a homeowner took out a home equity loan.
The city maintains a vacant-building registry, but it lists only properties reported by owners or that draw neighborhood complaints, so there likely are hundreds more than 766 empty homes. Across from Heutmaker's Reaney Street house, for example, neither of the two vacant buildings is currently on the city's registry.
With families forced out and houses reclaimed by financial institutions, getting vacant houses rehabilitated and back on the market is difficult. Critics say banks — particularly those with no local ties — are reluctant to sell the foreclosed properties at a loss.
"The real question is: How long will the banks sit on these properties?" said Chuck Repke, head of the Northeast Neighborhoods Development Corp. "What price will the banks ask for, and what will the city's response be? That's the problem of some mega-international bank owning the home. It doesn't mean a thing to them. … It's just a line on a spreadsheet."
Vacancies are concentrated in the North End, Payne-Phalen, Frogtown and — distressingly for many who worked hard to turn the neighborhood around — Dayton's Bluff. But they are up, too, in more stable neighborhoods, such as the greater East Side and Highland Park.
The problem wears on activists in the Dayton's Bluff neighborhood, where much energy has been spent polishing the area's reputation. Stately, turn-of-the-century homes rivaling anything on Summit Avenue can now be found around many corners there. But they are abutted, increasingly, by vacant homes that are often boarded up.
"It's disheartening to see all these vacant houses again," admits Jim Erchul, executive director of Dayton's Bluff Neighborhood Housing Services.
FEWER FEDERAL FUNDS
The question is, what do you do about it?
On Wednesday, the St. Paul City Council will hear a report outlining the scope of the problem, and Mayor Chris Coleman's administration is trying a broad approach to finding solutions. Council Member Dan Bostrom, whose East Side ward has more than its share of vacant buildings, says the city should encourage people to invest in their neighborhoods.
"We've got to come up with a plan to get owner-occupied duplexes," Bostrom said. "Get home ownership back in those neighborhoods."
Ann Mulholland, Coleman's chief of staff, said neighborhood vitality is City Hall's top priority.
"Mayor Coleman feels that our neighborhood character and culture is what makes St. Paul St. Paul," she said. "We are really turning our attention to this in a focused and concentrated way."
In conversations with several council members and members of the Coleman administration, there seems to be a unity of purpose and an understanding that, if unchecked, the problem could tear at the fabric of the city.
"We're not going to take a year to look at this," said Cecile Bedore, the city's director of planning and economic development. "We have to make sure we don't develop an 80-page report and stick it on a shelf."
But city government doesn't have as many revitalization tools as it once did.
Neighborhood development corporations, which are funded by local, state and federal grants, often take a leading role in revitalizing neighborhoods. But there is less money for redevelopment today than five years ago, when the number of vacant buildings was low.
St. Paul funding from Community Development Block Grants and the HOME program, the two main sources of federal urban-renewal funds, declined from $12.8 million in 2001 to $11.4 million in 2005 — an 11 percent drop that looms larger when the increasing costs of redevelopment are factored in.
St. Paul — which received $18.8 million in 1975, the first year of the block grant program — is not alone. In recent years, funding nationwide has been cut from $4.3 billion in 2002 to $3.7 billion in 2006.
"It's a nationwide problem," said Michael Wallace, senior legislative counsel for the Washington, D.C.-based National League of Cities.
President Bush's administration wants to tweak the formulas used to award grants to better serve communities in need, said Brian Sullivan, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
"In the budget climate we're in, if you can't demonstrate results, you're going to be a target," Sullivan said, explaining why the program has been cut. "People here at HUD still love (the program). We all love it."
SPREADING CANCER
Surprisingly, not everyone's unhappy with a boarded-up home. A Pioneer Press analysis seven years ago found that crime associated with many buildings dropped once they became vacant.
"Some of the people who are living next to those boarded-up houses will say it's better today than it was when the miscreants were living there," Bostrom said.
But the problems associated with vacant homes only worsen with time. Youths commonly break in, as do vandals looking to gut the homes of their copper and lead pipes to resell, especially now that the market for recycled metals is booming.
Homes that sit empty often fall into disrepair, dragging down property values. A 1995 study by the Family Housing Fund of Minneapolis and St. Paul found that homes adjacent to and directly across from a vacancy drop $10,000 in value.
Mark Johnson has seen the effect firsthand. A Realtor with Edina Realty, Johnson is trying to sell a North End house at 9 E. Jessamine St. for an out-of-state investor. The small, single-story home, surrounded by vacancies, was listed last year for almost $130,000. It's now offered for less than $95,000.
"The neighborhood does matter. It's location, location, location," Johnson said.
With four registered vacant buildings nearby and an empty lot where the city recently razed a nuisance house across the street, the home is a tough sell. Johnson said crime in the area also is a problem, and that the reports he gets from agents working with potential buyers aren't good.
"They say, 'Clients drove by, didn't feel comfortable, didn't get out of car, left,' " Johnson said.
The city spends $700,000 a year to maintain unkempt properties, including vacancies, as part of an aggressive monitoring campaign. The city mows the lawn, picks up garbage and boards up windows if needed. The cost for the work is added to the home's tax bill, and most of the money is eventually recouped once the owner pays the taxes or the home is sold.
But laws intended to protect homebuyers can stall the turnaround of a vacant property. After a property goes into foreclosure, for example, the owner often has six months or more to take it back. This so-called redemption period is among the longest in the nation.
"Let's say the city wants to prevent a vacant property from sitting empty for X amount of time," City Council President Lantry said. "The fact is, if the mortgage company isn't past the redemption period, it's gotta sit there."
RELUCTANT TO RAZE
The city does have available some extreme measures. If a home deteriorates enough, the city has the power to demolish it. But that only creates more problems.
Not only does razing create a "gap-toothed" streetscape, but the action also is fraught with symbolism. When a home at 14 E. Jessamine St. was leveled earlier this year, picketers accused the city of trampling on property rights.
Furthermore, owners of property where a home has been razed sometimes quit paying their taxes. Then a lot can sit as long as five years before it's forfeited back to the government.
Vacant homes have long been the source of angst, spawning litigation between the city and HUD, which once owned hundreds of homes across the Twin Cities. Activists have squatted in vacant homes to focus attention on homelessness, arguing that some could be used to shelter the needy. And they can harbor crime — in 1999, an 8-year-old girl was raped in a vacant Frogtown home.
So, what to do?
For one thing, Lantry would like the city to open a dialogue with the banks.
"They'd better come to the table to see if there's some strategy we can employ to get them out from holding all these homes. … They took a chance, they overextended, they compromised their underwriting policies and procedures," Lantry said. "They took a chance because values were increasing so rapidly that they could recoup their money if people walked away.
"That's not happening anymore."
Jason Hoppin can be reached at jhoppin@pioneerpress.com or 651- 292-1892.
Next steps in St. Paul
St. Paul is following two tracks to attack the problem of emptying neighborhoods:
• The City Council will officially hear a report Wednesday that examines the roots of foreclosures and vacancies. That report will be the basis for policy decisions, which could include such steps as seeking state legislation or adding staff to the city's licensing department, which oversees vacant buildings.
• The report likely will align with a fast-track effort by Mayor Chris Coleman's administration to examine the broader scope of the problem, including poverty, education disparities and other socioeconomic causes. The Department of Planning and Economic Development is spearheading the effort and is meeting with City Hall department heads and concerned community organizations. PED Director Cecile Bedore said the mayor may convene a community development cabinet to make sure the recommendations for solving neighborhood disinvestment are implemented.
—————————-
From Sunday: "These Homes Were Lost," with a map of foreclosures across the Twin Cities during the past year and a half, is on www.twincities.com.
———————————-
Bob> This is the second story on this subject and I see nothing concerning the Citys actions contributing to these registered vacant homes.
If nobody's home, trouble comes calling
St. Paul's spike in vacancies threatens neighborhoods
BY JASON HOPPIN and MARYJO SYLWESTER
Pioneer Press
Ali Dahir, 17, a student at Humboldt Senior High School, walks past a boarded up house on the corner of East Minnehaha Avenue and Bradley Street in St. Paul Friday.
More photos
Sunday: These homes were lost … and that's just the beginning
A map of St. Paul shows vacancies throughout the city, but concentrations in Payne-Phalen and Dayton's Bluff.
Five homes sit empty at an intersection in St. Paul's Railroad Island neighborhood — foreboding, boarded-up omens of a community teetering on the brink.
Broken glass glitters on a stretch of sidewalk in front of the East Side homes at Bradley Street and Minnehaha Avenue, near the geographic heart of the city. A Dumpster in a driveway overflows with what once were a family's belongings — an old couch, some chairs, a child's toy.
In scattered clusters, the scene is repeated across St. Paul, especially in the city's poorer neighborhoods, where there are many rental properties. In the past five years, the number of vacant St. Paul buildings has more than doubled, an alarming trend that, in some areas, threatens to unravel years of rising property values.
The reasons are many and the solutions few. A softening housing market, questionable lending practices and neighborhood crime all have contributed to the problem, while federal funding for rehabilitating urban cores has dwindled.
For people who invested in the neighborhoods, who bought homes and spent their hard-earned money fixing them up, the trend is unsettling.
"My immediate concern is the two houses across the street. They've been vacant for almost a year," said Elmer Heutmaker, 39, a Dayton's Bluff resident for 18 months, adding that one of the homes has been broken into. "My wife and I just hope and pray that someone decent moves in."
The situation has caught the attention of the mayor and the City Council, which will hear about the extent of the problem at its Wednesday meeting.
The burning question is what to do about the vacancies and foreclosures. Absent a huge rebound in the real estate market, the problem seems destined to linger. And the longer buildings remain vacant, the harder they are to keep from becoming blight on the neighborhood.
"It decreases the values of the surrounding homes, and it creates a sense of abandonment," said Mike Anderson, executive director of the East Side Neighborhood Development Co., one of a handful of St. Paul nonprofits that piece together public and private funding to revitalize neighborhoods.
A DOWNWARD SPIRAL
St. Paul's 766 listed vacancies put downward pressure on all aspects of their neighborhoods, from home values to the public's perception of its schools. When that happens, families become more reluctant to move in, hastening the downward spiral.
The vacancies disproportionately affect poor neighborhoods and those with a high number of minorities. Three-quarters are in neighborhoods where incomes are less than the citywide average, according to a Pioneer Press analysis of city records. Barely a quarter of St. Paul neighborhoods have predominantly minority populations, but those areas account for 43 percent of the vacancies.
Fueling the phenomenon is an escalating number of foreclosures that appears to be partly the result of nontraditional home financing, such as high-risk loans and adjustable-rate mortgages, which became popular during the go-go days of the real estate boom.
And there is widespread speculation that many investors in rental properties simply got in over their heads.
"They used collateral on this one to buy that one," City Council President Kathy Lantry said. "And when they start falling apart, they lose them all."
But there's evidence that not just first-time homebuyers and investors are losing their houses. According to City Council researchers, 46 percent of citywide foreclosures came after a homeowner took out a home equity loan.
The city maintains a vacant-building registry, but it lists only properties reported by owners or that draw neighborhood complaints, so there likely are hundreds more than 766 empty homes. Across from Heutmaker's Reaney Street house, for example, neither of the two vacant buildings is currently on the city's registry.
With families forced out and houses reclaimed by financial institutions, getting vacant houses rehabilitated and back on the market is difficult. Critics say banks — particularly those with no local ties — are reluctant to sell the foreclosed properties at a loss.
"The real question is: How long will the banks sit on these properties?" said Chuck Repke, head of the Northeast Neighborhoods Development Corp. "What price will the banks ask for, and what will the city's response be? That's the problem of some mega-international bank owning the home. It doesn't mean a thing to them. … It's just a line on a spreadsheet."
Vacancies are concentrated in the North End, Payne-Phalen, Frogtown and — distressingly for many who worked hard to turn the neighborhood around — Dayton's Bluff. But they are up, too, in more stable neighborhoods, such as the greater East Side and Highland Park.
The problem wears on activists in the Dayton's Bluff neighborhood, where much energy has been spent polishing the area's reputation. Stately, turn-of-the-century homes rivaling anything on Summit Avenue can now be found around many corners there. But they are abutted, increasingly, by vacant homes that are often boarded up.
"It's disheartening to see all these vacant houses again," admits Jim Erchul, executive director of Dayton's Bluff Neighborhood Housing Services.
FEWER FEDERAL FUNDS
The question is, what do you do about it?
On Wednesday, the St. Paul City Council will hear a report outlining the scope of the problem, and Mayor Chris Coleman's administration is trying a broad approach to finding solutions. Council Member Dan Bostrom, whose East Side ward has more than its share of vacant buildings, says the city should encourage people to invest in their neighborhoods.
"We've got to come up with a plan to get owner-occupied duplexes," Bostrom said. "Get home ownership back in those neighborhoods."
Ann Mulholland, Coleman's chief of staff, said neighborhood vitality is City Hall's top priority.
"Mayor Coleman feels that our neighborhood character and culture is what makes St. Paul St. Paul," she said. "We are really turning our attention to this in a focused and concentrated way."
In conversations with several council members and members of the Coleman administration, there seems to be a unity of purpose and an understanding that, if unchecked, the problem could tear at the fabric of the city.
"We're not going to take a year to look at this," said Cecile Bedore, the city's director of planning and economic development. "We have to make sure we don't develop an 80-page report and stick it on a shelf."
But city government doesn't have as many revitalization tools as it once did.
Neighborhood development corporations, which are funded by local, state and federal grants, often take a leading role in revitalizing neighborhoods. But there is less money for redevelopment today than five years ago, when the number of vacant buildings was low.
St. Paul funding from Community Development Block Grants and the HOME program, the two main sources of federal urban-renewal funds, declined from $12.8 million in 2001 to $11.4 million in 2005 — an 11 percent drop that looms larger when the increasing costs of redevelopment are factored in.
St. Paul — which received $18.8 million in 1975, the first year of the block grant program — is not alone. In recent years, funding nationwide has been cut from $4.3 billion in 2002 to $3.7 billion in 2006.
"It's a nationwide problem," said Michael Wallace, senior legislative counsel for the Washington, D.C.-based National League of Cities.
President Bush's administration wants to tweak the formulas used to award grants to better serve communities in need, said Brian Sullivan, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
"In the budget climate we're in, if you can't demonstrate results, you're going to be a target," Sullivan said, explaining why the program has been cut. "People here at HUD still love (the program). We all love it."
SPREADING CANCER
Surprisingly, not everyone's unhappy with a boarded-up home. A Pioneer Press analysis seven years ago found that crime associated with many buildings dropped once they became vacant.
"Some of the people who are living next to those boarded-up houses will say it's better today than it was when the miscreants were living there," Bostrom said.
But the problems associated with vacant homes only worsen with time. Youths commonly break in, as do vandals looking to gut the homes of their copper and lead pipes to resell, especially now that the market for recycled metals is booming.
Homes that sit empty often fall into disrepair, dragging down property values. A 1995 study by the Family Housing Fund of Minneapolis and St. Paul found that homes adjacent to and directly across from a vacancy drop $10,000 in value.
Mark Johnson has seen the effect firsthand. A Realtor with Edina Realty, Johnson is trying to sell a North End house at 9 E. Jessamine St. for an out-of-state investor. The small, single-story home, surrounded by vacancies, was listed last year for almost $130,000. It's now offered for less than $95,000.
"The neighborhood does matter. It's location, location, location," Johnson said.
With four registered vacant buildings nearby and an empty lot where the city recently razed a nuisance house across the street, the home is a tough sell. Johnson said crime in the area also is a problem, and that the reports he gets from agents working with potential buyers aren't good.
"They say, 'Clients drove by, didn't feel comfortable, didn't get out of car, left,' " Johnson said.
The city spends $700,000 a year to maintain unkempt properties, including vacancies, as part of an aggressive monitoring campaign. The city mows the lawn, picks up garbage and boards up windows if needed. The cost for the work is added to the home's tax bill, and most of the money is eventually recouped once the owner pays the taxes or the home is sold.
But laws intended to protect homebuyers can stall the turnaround of a vacant property. After a property goes into foreclosure, for example, the owner often has six months or more to take it back. This so-called redemption period is among the longest in the nation.
"Let's say the city wants to prevent a vacant property from sitting empty for X amount of time," City Council President Lantry said. "The fact is, if the mortgage company isn't past the redemption period, it's gotta sit there."
RELUCTANT TO RAZE
The city does have available some extreme measures. If a home deteriorates enough, the city has the power to demolish it. But that only creates more problems.
Not only does razing create a "gap-toothed" streetscape, but the action also is fraught with symbolism. When a home at 14 E. Jessamine St. was leveled earlier this year, picketers accused the city of trampling on property rights.
Furthermore, owners of property where a home has been razed sometimes quit paying their taxes. Then a lot can sit as long as five years before it's forfeited back to the government.
Vacant homes have long been the source of angst, spawning litigation between the city and HUD, which once owned hundreds of homes across the Twin Cities. Activists have squatted in vacant homes to focus attention on homelessness, arguing that some could be used to shelter the needy. And they can harbor crime — in 1999, an 8-year-old girl was raped in a vacant Frogtown home.
So, what to do?
For one thing, Lantry would like the city to open a dialogue with the banks.
"They'd better come to the table to see if there's some strategy we can employ to get them out from holding all these homes. … They took a chance, they overextended, they compromised their underwriting policies and procedures," Lantry said. "They took a chance because values were increasing so rapidly that they could recoup their money if people walked away.
"That's not happening anymore."
Jason Hoppin can be reached at jhoppin@pioneerpress.com or 651- 292-1892.
Next steps in St. Paul
St. Paul is following two tracks to attack the problem of emptying neighborhoods:
• The City Council will officially hear a report Wednesday that examines the roots of foreclosures and vacancies. That report will be the basis for policy decisions, which could include such steps as seeking state legislation or adding staff to the city's licensing department, which oversees vacant buildings.
• The report likely will align with a fast-track effort by Mayor Chris Coleman's administration to examine the broader scope of the problem, including poverty, education disparities and other socioeconomic causes. The Department of Planning and Economic Development is spearheading the effort and is meeting with City Hall department heads and concerned community organizations. PED Director Cecile Bedore said the mayor may convene a community development cabinet to make sure the recommendations for solving neighborhood disinvestment are implemented.
—————————-
From Sunday: "These Homes Were Lost," with a map of foreclosures across the Twin Cities during the past year and a half, is on www.twincities.com.
———————————-
Bob> This is the second story on this subject and I see nothing concerning the Citys actions contributing to these registered vacant homes.
posted by Bob at Monday, September 25, 2006
11 Comments:
"Some landlords got in over their heads". Only until the city monsters came around and put us there. It seems to be a big 'ol shit story that they can use as a defense. The only problem is that they speak out the other side of their *ss. These people are suppose to make daily decisions for st. Paul and still are confused with all the vacant buildings around. I don't remember seeing any vacant buildings around 6 or 7 years ago when I would drive through on a daily basis.
I can't believe that there is not somthing more to this than dumb people thinking they are helping the city by cleaning up it's purported older housing stock and making the city beautiful with everything new. Do they have stock in Home Depot? Are there massive brother-in-laws with construction companies or uncles with plumbing licenses in st. paul? Was oil discovered under the city somewhere in the payne/bluff area?
I tried to send an e-mail to the reporter on Sundays report inregards to the city's code enforcement and their procedures making it impossible for the average citizen to afford the never ending list code enforcement officials supply. The address at the end of the report would not allow my message to go through. Maybe they are afraid of the comments they will receive or some other tech. error I don't know but one way or another I will get my two cents in.
Nancy (formerly of St.Paul)
Reprinted from "St. Paul issues and Forums"
Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2006 07:38:56 -0700 (PDT)
From: "M Charles Swope" mcswope@yahoo.com
To: "Steven Clift" clift@publicus.net, "SPIF" stpaul-issues@forums.e-democracy.org
Subject: [SPIF] Housing
There's an interesting and important article in today's Pioneer Press
concerning the large and growing number of vacant houses in St. Paul
neighborhoods. http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/15601073.htm
Questions I have that are not addressed in the article are whether the
new, city subsidized housing constructed over the past few years
(Kelly's 5000 program) has contributed to the problem of vacant older houses
and whether those subsidies have made it more difficult for the city to
address the problem of vacant and deteriorating existing housing. It's
this stock of vacant, existing houses that is dragging down
neighborhoods. Much of the new housing has done nothing for existing neighborhoods
since it's been built in previously nonresidential areas like the
riverfront (the Centex development) and the large apartment complex on the
West End of 7th Street.
Charlie Swope
Ramsey Hill, Ward 2, St. Paul
More info: http://forums.e-democracy.org/stpaul/contacts/charlesswope
Now some of the problems are coming home to roost. When the city "raised teh bar" and began arbitrarily requiring landlords to bring their property up to modern day building codes just like a newly constructed house, there were hundreds of these properties sold off to new investors. A lot of the new investors took tens of theousands in cash out of the transaction at the sale, and THAT is where a big percentage of these vacant buildings came from. Yes there are a lot of market forces that are also causing forclosures, etc., but the city of St. Paul had a direct hand in most of the vacant building status as we see it today. The neighbors thought it was a great idea, so just choke on it St. Paul. You got what you asked for.
Hoe the hell did the city think that they were going to do what they did to the landlords on such a grand scale and not have it have an effect, at least in part on the real estate market here?
The city council wanted to use housing codes to address behavior problems and now it will be interesting to see what the voters do about the city council behavior!
A friend of mine was selling a duplex he owned and at the closing the buyers Attorney told him that the way the political atmosphere is in St. Paul with code inspections, he would be better off walking away and losing his $6,000 earnest money rather than buy a house in St. Paul. the buyer took the Attorney advice and walked away. This was in the summer of '05, and my friend still hasn't been able to sell it.
City Counselman Bostrom- "We've got to come up with a plan to get owner-occupied duplexes," Bostrom said. "Get home ownership back in those neighborhoods."
Bob- The highest percentage of these vacant homes are rental units.
This is how the City fights crime. If there is criminal activity at a rental property. Close the house down. Hit it with numerous work orders expending an investors capitol. Hope the criminal element moves elsewhere.Then the investor may or may not be able to afford to pay the mortgage until the home is sold.
The City is selectively and prejudicially targeting a protected class of people and the Investors who house them.
Now the homes will have to meet full code compliance and the value of the homes will exceed affordability of low income families who once occupied them.
A lot of people do not understand the term "Code Complainace." Most people think it means that a property owner should keep the building up to code, and not have any unsafe conditons existing.
THIS IS NOT WHAT IT MEANS!
When the city of St. Paul subjects these condemned and vacant houses to "code complaince," what they are doing is in effect telling the property owner to bring the property into complaince with what would be the equivalent of the modern day building code, like it is a brand new house being built today. That means a person is stuck tearing out walls, floors, etc. replacing perfectly good and working plumbing, furnaces, stairways, ect....WHATEVER the city wants.....and at the same time your neighbors ARE NOT subjected to this and they get to maintain their homes under the code the house was built under (with some small exceptions.)
The city uses this power (even though they have NO authority to)to address behavior and predjudice issues with neighbors, and they disguise it as a law enforcement tool. The neighbors do not like someone so they call the City Council and complain. The City Coucnil then calls out the inspectors and they come and (in some cases, not all) they lie about certain repairs so they can condemn the house and make it vacant, and BINGO....now they insist on the owner making all these costly repairs that no one else has to make.
Do these houses need repair? Yes they do, in some but not all cases, but they do not a code complaince.
Most of the code complainces cost $40,000.00 to $50,000.00. Who can afford that?
By requiring the owner to invest so much money into the property, the City of St. Paul has practicaly gauranteed that the owner will not be able to rent to the low income people any longer because now the rent has to go up too high for the low incomes to afford it.
No one has ever to my knowledge complained that they do not want to or think they should not have to keep their hosue up to snuff. What they are saying is that they do not want to be TARGETED AND DSICRIMINATED against for repairs that no one else has to make. They want to be able to maintain their property in accordance the the city's chapter 34 housing code standards, just like all the other taxpayers, not the bankrupting code complaiance scam that the city has going on.
If I am not mistaken, this is one of the elements of the lawsuits the landlrods have brought, and considering how the city has acted, I personally think the landlords will win.
If the home owner cannot afford to do the repairs, then the City Council just tears down your house for you and you have nothing.....as in the Jessamine case some months ago.
Then one of their "pet developers" or "non profit" organizations winds up with the vacant lots somewhere down the road to build their projects on.
St. Paul has not been telling the truth about anything concerning the housing code inspections department, and now it seems like it is time to pay the price.
How could the city think that for 5 years they could go around condemning, requiring these expensive code compliances, and tearing down everything they can get their hands on and not have it make an effect on the community?
Jason, Jason, Jason! Do you work for the City of St Paul? I am sure when you wrote this story you interviewed President Kathy Lantry, perhaps Dan Bostrom and even David Thune. However, did you bother to get the story for anyone who has been face to face with a house that has been "Blue Tagged (Vacant List)"? After reading this story I know the answer. What does the City of St Paul consider a "Vacant" Home? Is it a house that is in the process of being sold? Is it a home that is in between tenants? Or maybe it is a home that the owner just decided to leave unoccupied for a short time to see if the market corrects itself. Do these situations constitute being put on a list that will ultimately kill the homes value? Or does this mean the the owner of this "Vacant, Unoccupied" home should have to have a City of St Paul Plumbing, Heating, Mechanical, Electrical, and Building Inspector come into the home, create a list of repairs that will bring the home up to "todays" housing code and spend $20,000-$140,000 in repairs or risk the chance the city will tear the house down. Does this seem RIGHT? Hello, this is a FACT. Wake Up! This is what the City of St Paul is doing people. There is no easy Fix going on here! Councilman Pat Harris, take notice of what is happening. Obviously, Bostrom, Helgen, Lantry and Judge Jay are turning their cheeks to this issue. You may be the only person who has a backbone that can stand up to this. Let me ask City of St Paul Ccouncil President Kathy Lantry a question, "How many homes in Highland Park have been Blue Tagged (Vacant List)? I bet very few! Let me ask you, you honorable one, have none of these houses in Highland Park been UNOCCUPIED? Have none of these houses never sat empty while work was being done to them? Have they not been on the market to be sold and the sellers already had moved into their new house? You know the answer you politician you! You smooth talker. Lets see, blame the problem of the owner of the house, right?
Get a backbone Pat-- Clean up these chambers. We will all see through this soon, I assure you.
Chuck Repke-- All of us already know that you are the housing professor. You need not teach us anymore that the government cannot do wrong. You are the King Chuck, in your own Kingdom.
Shame on You St Paul City Council.
I am assuming you're using the term "honorable" very loosley when referring to Kathy Lantry, but hold on a minute here....when it comes to "Judge Jay," please show some respct. He is a man of the law now....or wants to be anyway. Watch him in the Council meetings. Whenever he can stick it to someone for a fine or punishment, he acts so concerned about following the law. Too bad he doesn't have the same attitude toward housing inspections by NHPI
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