Summary Of The Vacant Building Crisis

I reprinted this here from the comment section

Let the outpouring of hate flow...it goes both ways you know and the landlords in St. Paul have plenty of it. For years they have been made the scapegoat for everything from A to Z by gutless politicians who refuse to stand up to the real problem.

3:57 wants us to go to the top where it all started. Lets do that. Prior to Mayor Kelly taking office the city of St. Paul had a reasonably well run rental housing market. Was it perfect? Hell no! There were some problems, and there were some problem owners, but not anywhere near the numbers the city would have you believe. The managers of code enforcement at this time knew how to handle the situation and they were doing so. Then comes the new administration with their Nazi like tactics and what seemed like a grudge against everyone they could get their hands on. What used to be a workable situation with results turned into no cooperation what so ever, and an attitude that wanted to be a bully rather than cooperate with anyone. This was rampant everywhere within every city agency, not just with landlords. The newspapers even wrote about it. The landlords saw such a hostile environment to do business in, they realized they would not survive and started selling off their properties fearing that they would be the next victim of a code enforcement department that routinely lied about repairs that did not need to be made in order to get the house condemned so they use the condemnation as a springboard to a vacant building status where they then illegally demand that owners bring their properties up to the modern day building code just like a new house that was built yesterday. Rather than make the landlords bring the house into compliance with the city's chapter 34 minimum standards regarding such properties, they chose the most expensive route to deliberately raise the owners costs and thus rid the neighborhood of the poor people who were not liked by the neighbors because of the problem behavior. An average code compliance of this type usually costs around $50,000.00, which I hope all of you home owners who think the city's plan was such a good idea are able to afford to do, because you will be next after they have set "precedent" with what they are doing now. It was during the Kelly administration that real estate really started heating up, and then came the infomercials and the "too good to be true" mortgages. Most of the veteran landlords who had a lot of equity in their properties and the option to lower rents or whatever they had to do in response to the market started selling their properties as fast as they could to avoid being the next victim of the city. Some were not so lucky. They were forced into bankruptcy, lost their life savings, lost their livelihoods, lost retirements, college funds for their kids, and some even lost the home they lived in and their marriages due to the city's dirty deeds. These were the professionals that 3:15 talks about. They knew how to run the business and how to make a good and lasting repair at a cost effective price. Most of the new buyers for these properties fell into 2 categories. One was a buyer with no experience in rental housing at all. They didn't know the business and they didn't know how to repair anything, and most have a full time job so property investment and management are mostly a weekend (if that) affair for them. They have to hire it all done and most of them are getting taken advantage of by the contractors and handymen looking for a quick buck. The 2nd group are the scammers and equity busters that buy the property for grossly inflated prices, take $50,000.00 to $60,000.00 cash home with them the day of the closing and never even go back to get the rents from the tenants that are living there. Not a bad living if you can figure out how to do this 15 or 20 times a year! Most of these homes that this group of buyers purchased are vacant and boarded up today. They are the homes that the poor people used to live in that are no longer available to them. The ones walking away from their homes are the new buyers who purchased these properties at top dollar and now cannot take care of them either because of higher repair costs, over regulation or the lack of renters. A lot of the renters got sucked into the scam also, because they found out they could buy a home and have lower payments with one of these tricky mortgages than the payment for renting a home. A lot of the ones who couldn't get a mortgage just left town for someplace where they could find housing. This crowd that 3:15 talks about that has all the hate and wants to see all these vacant buildings torn down may get their wish and then the city can usher in the "brownfield of Detroit" as another one of their accomplishments. Granted some of the vacant homes in the city were home owners, and many of them were previous renters, but the city's own report to the city council says that most of these vacant and empty homes are rental properties. While the easy mortgages may have been a factor, it was an out of control code enforcement department that started the ball rolling in the mass sell off of all these rental properties. As for the outpouring of hate for the absentee landlords that 3:15 talks about, I have a message for you: it is your peoples hate and attitude for someone else that started the ball rolling. All you people with all your hatred got exactly what you have wanted for years....these rental homes are empty now , the tenants are gone, now you can live in peace and choke on your hatred for something you don't even understand. Get used to it, you haven't seen nothing yet, wait until next year at this time. Those vacant homes you have been so desirous of will be multiplying in numbers.

11:40 PM