Foreclosures North Minneapolis
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posted by Bob at Saturday, May 05, 2007
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As the nation's foreclosure problem hits north Minneapolis especially hard, empty houses and for-sale signs are taking a toll. On one block of Logan Avenue N., a dozen homes have been in foreclosure since mid 2005 after their owners didn't make their mortgage payments. Here's a look at that street, the foreclosures and the status of the neighborhood.
By Pam Louwagie and Glenn Howatt, Star Tribune
Last update: May 04, 2007 – 11:28 PM
The screen door banging in the night on the vacant house next door startled Shelia Cranford at first.
She'd get out of bed, walk over to the bathroom and peek at the house through her window blinds. Was someone breaking in? Trying to steal copper or use the house as a drug haven? She'd sigh with relief when she saw it was just the wind whacking the aluminum door against the frame.
For more than six months now, the house in north Minneapolis' Jordan neighborhood has stood empty, Cranford said. A previous owner failed to keep up with mortgage payments and the bank bought it at a sheriff's sale in 2005. Its latest owner, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, is trying to unload it for $72,000.
And the banging door brings the national epidemic of home foreclosures into Cranford's bedroom.
In north Minneapolis, the epicenter of foreclosures in the Twin Cities, 1,400 houses have been sold at foreclosure auctions in the past 16 months alone. On the block of Logan Avenue N. where Cranford lives, 12 of the 27 houses have been in various stages of foreclosure since mid-2005.
For many of those homes, it was a story not of poor homeowners unable to afford their houses, but of shoestring landlords whose investments turned bad.
That doesn't make it any easier for those like Cranford, trying to make a life in a tough neighborhood. Houses around her empty out. Some get boarded up. Criminals have more room to work.
Besides the vacant two-story beige-and-rose-colored house next to Cranford on the 3000 and 3100 block of Logan, there is one down the block with grass growing wildly, one across the street with broken windows, another with foreclosure court papers taped to it. Another house, damaged in a fire, is boarded up. Six have "For Sale" signs.
"It does make the neighborhood look not just desolate, but kind of unclean," Cranford said. "Like it's dying."
Trusting in Logan
Despite the North Side's long-struggling reputation, Cranford bet her American Dream on Logan nearly 14 years ago.
She found a sturdy white stucco house for less than $60,000. It had dark-stained Craftsman-style woodwork and a back yard full of grass. There were families with young children on the street and it seemed like a good place to finish raising her three adolescent daughters.
And it was, for most of the years since then, she said. But lately she's watched the neighborhood deteriorate. Families around her started to leave, and more landlords started snatching up the housing stock.
Some of the landlords didn't keep up the properties and drove away good tenants. Some tenants tore homes apart. The street started to feel unsafe.
The house next door was purchased by a man in his 20s and his lack of experience in real estate showed, Cranford said. He had good tenants at first, she said, but then he got behind on some things and those tenants got fed up. The renters who replaced them were younger and louder and attracted crowds for parties.
Now that the house is empty, it is more peaceful. But Cranford worries about what lies ahead for the century-old house and the street around it.
Empty hopes
Cranford took a rare walk on her block one recent sunny morning. She and her neighbors used to sit on their lawns all the time, but she's afraid to venture out much nowadays.
"I go out there when I can to sweep up my grounds and stuff like that," she said. "That's about it."
She strolled down a sidewalk lined with giant trees sprawling over the pavement and houses built mostly in the early part of the last century.
"They're not bad homes, you know. They just need to be kept up," Cranford said.
An empty house on the corner -- a small one-story beige-sided structure with brown trim -- had grass growing wild and an empty potato-chip bag and condom wrapper on the steps.
Cranford walked up the street and stopped in front of 3106, a grand, two-story white house with gray trim and stained glass in a front window.
It stands empty, too. One window is broken. A screen is detached and twisted on another.
"I used to know a family that lived in this house," she said. "They were decent people. They were good people."
But it was sold at a sheriff's sale in October. The prior owner, Carol Kubes, was surprised when she got a foreclosure notice, Kubes said in an interview. She had let a former boyfriend use her name for the property because he didn't have good credit, Kubes said.
"He was supposed to put the property in his name, and he never did. And I found out when I got the foreclosure notice," she said.
Kubes didn't know what was happening on the street with the house she used to own.
Crime/foreclosure cycle
At 10:30 a.m., a group of young people gathered in the street, bass booming from a cranked car stereo. They were in front of 3019, another house sold at a sheriff's sale but still filled with renters.
It's one of several properties that landlord Howie Gangestad is trying to hang onto. Though he has until July to redeem the Logan property, he said he may surrender it to save some of his others.
He fell on hard times because the rental market changed, he said.
"Everybody got in the dang business," he said. "There's too much competition."
Though neighbors at some of his properties have complained about his tenants, he doesn't do background checks on them, he said, because that would make renting his properties even more difficult in rough neighborhoods.
Crime and foreclosures are the number one and number two concerns of residents in the Jordan neighborhood, said Jerry Moore, executive director of the Jordan Area Community Council.
And they go hand in hand, he said.
And for a neighborhood already struggling with livability issues and declining home values, some worry that the recent foreclosure phenomenon will push it too far.
"The American dream for most people is homeownership. And here we are asking individuals to continue to invest in deteriorating situations, but there's no hope," Moore said. "They're being affected, obviously house by house, so their blocks are being eroded."
Stuck in place
For the homeowners left behind, it's a lonely existence.
Cranford said she'd like to sell but doesn't think her house would fetch a worthy price anymore. Once appraised at more than $185,000, she expects she'd get far less now -- not enough to buy something decent elsewhere.
"If I could just pack up and move out, I would have been gone myself," she said.
Kay Engmark, who has rented a duplex down the street for more than a dozen years, said she isn't considering moving yet. She plans to wait for things to improve again.
'It's one after another'
But the foreclosures are making it more difficult, she said. "It's one after another that bothers me," she said, pointing down the street. "It's boom, boom, boom ... the longer they're empty, then they start showing problems."
Cranford will stay for now, too, keeping an eye out her windows on the empty house next door and on the street scene in front.
And she'll hope things turn around.
"You try and hide or pray," Cranford said. "That's what I do mostly."
Pam Louwagie • 612-673-7102 plouwagie@startribune.com
Glenn Howatt • 612-673-7192 howatt@startribune.com
You beat me to the punch Bob. I just read this story while eating breakfast at MaDonalds and I was going to write to you about it. I have read your blog for a while now, somtimes with skeptisism and sometimes in complete agreeement. While this article concerns Minneapolis, I believe a lot of the same things will still apply over in St Paul. At one point I spent a considerable amount of time reading all the previous posts on your blog, and as I read this story I find myself being constantly reminded about things that have been said here about the criminal tactics used by the city to force landlords to sell thieir properties, city council people trying to aviod having their depositions taken, "Politico wannabes" at SPIF protesting even the mention of wrong doing on the city's part, claims of people talking about the good landlords forced to sell and the current owners not keeping up the property, and now the paper is caliming a lot of the problem is "shoestring landlords" and their not keeping up on the properties. The more I read about what has gone on and what is going on and what caused it, the more inclined I am to believe everything I have read here about this situation. Thanks for the good work and IO am going to checking in a lot more often from now on. It seems like a person can find out the truth about thing here many months ahead of time than waiting for the newspaper to reveal anything.
the map is what St Paul's East Side will look like at election time and Lantry will still be talking some shit about landlords!
Did 10:13 read the same article I did?
There's nothing that talks about code compliance and certainly the St Paul Council can't be blamed for North Minneapolis.
What is reported is that there was too much speculation going on and being a landlord isn't a matter of simply buying a house and putting it out to rent:
"Some of the landlords didn't keep up the properties and drove away good tenants. Some tenants tore homes apart.
"The house next door was purchased by a man in his 20s and his lack of experience in real estate showed, Cranford said. He had good tenants at first, she said, but then he got behind on some things and those tenants got fed up. The renters who replaced them were younger and louder and attracted crowds for parties.
At 10:30 a.m., a group of young people gathered in the street, bass booming from a cranked car stereo. They were in front of 3019, another house sold at a sheriff's sale but still filled with renters.
It's one of several properties that landlord Howie Gangestad is trying to hang onto. Though he has until July to redeem the Logan property, he said he may surrender it to save some of his others.
He fell on hard times because the rental market changed, he said.
"Everybody got in the dang business," he said. "There's too much competition."
Though neighbors at some of his properties have complained about his tenants, he doesn't do background checks on them, he said, because that would make renting his properties even more difficult in rough neighborhoods."
The problem is amateur landlords and cheap mortgages. And I wonder how many of those landlords used mortgage money while saying they intended to live in the home ... in order to avoid investment-property lending requirements? And how many lenders/loan officers looked the other way?
A professional landlord
You may very well be a professional landlord, but myself also being a professional landlord, I can tell from your writings that you have never in your life rented to the low incomers, and that is where the difference is. The tenants tear the hell out of the place and the city encourages them to do it some more with their out of whack policies. Then they throw the blame at the feet of the landlord. I know several landlords who have sold out because they just could not deal with the inspections department in St Paul, and the new people buying were some of those shoestring landlords, and now the properties sit empty and abandonded. So go figure, the speculation that was going on was becasue good landlords were all selling out because of the city.
Coming soon to your neighborhood in St Paul....Brownfields. The Lantry gang will accept nothing less!
I heard that St Paul is in the process of buying some extra bulldpzers in anticipation of the demolishion frenzy they expect to work themselves up to.
Please have some respect for KATHY LANTRY, after all she does work hard taking complaints in her office.
9:50, I think Kathy is a classy sexy gal for her age.
Have you ever been graced with her presents? She smells like a flower garden.
And the icing on that classy cake is inteligence.
You would be so lucky to have a gal like that in your life.
A friend told me that all the code enforcement officers are in training right now to operate bulldozers. When they get a complaint they will be rolling up in a bulldozer very soon.
Interesting that one reader comments on SSPIF, I haven't been able to get onto their site for weeks. Every time I try to go there I get some kind of index page and none of the links on it take me to the right place. I finally just gave up. who need them anyways?
Why are some homes still standing, the condistion they are in.
Hey Dave Thune, Did anyone mention your wood on your home yet?
Can I operate the bulldozers, When they gets to Dave Thunes House?
Bill
Thune's house falls all over the sidewalk and they send a crooked inspector to cover it up. An East Side landlord had a torn screen and missing tile on the kitchen floor and they send in a wrecking crew. If your're an idiot on the West Side, the have different tactics. This requires sending in a load of bad insulation that give off fumes to drive you crazy and thus destroy your credibility when you try to blow the whistle on the city. St Paul has all the bases covered it seems.
Howie Gangestad gives landlords a bad name. Go back to South America Howie and get jiggy with yourself Howie!
Why does he give landlords a bad name? Because he deosn't screen tenants in a neighborhood where only the lowest of the low are willing to live because of the criminal and unsafe enviornment that both cities go out of their way to enable? As far as I am concerned, these neighborhoods are getting exactly what they deserve. They have sat by for years and been willing to believe the city coming out and telling them it was the landlords fault when in fact it was the fault of the people commiting the criminal acts and also the city who shifted the buck and did nothing. They elected bad leaders with bad policies and got a bad result, I don't see how that is the landlords fault at all. What elese could they possibly have expected by holding someone other than the perpetrator responsible?
Nice try, but Howie is still a douchebag
And you cannot tell me why?
Try renting from him, or living next to one of his properties - been there done that. His places are dumps, he's always in trouble with his license, and when it hits the fan, he leaves the country.
These are the trappings of a successful businessman. I think your jealous.
I am jealous of Howie's business success? That's like saying you're envious of handicaped people because they get the best parking spots. Howie is a douchebag.
Sounds like you are part of the problem if you rented from him since he only rents to scummy people who have bad credit, horrible rental histories, criminal records and who have been on gov't assistance since birth. Get off your lazy asses and do something about it if you don't like living in the hood. The landlord didn't make people like you walk into his door and ask for a place to live, you did! The landlord didn't make you live in the place you chose to live in, you did! If you didn't like it you prolly moved and did the same thing somewhere else. You are a lazy idiot and that's why you have no legitimate reason for feeling the way you do. Keep drinking your self-pity Kool-aid...
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