Upkeep of empty (foreclosed) homes falls to weary neighbors

[Liberal_in_LA]

http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_10002009

Neighbors tend to foreclosures
Upkeep of empty homes falls to weary neighbors
By Paul Burgarino
East County Times
Article Launched: 07/25/2008 08:57:44 PM PDT

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site571/2008/0725/20080725__eect0726cleanup~3_Gallery

Every day, Kristen Hendricks walks by a vacant blue two-story home in her Antioch neighborhood. After months of seeing the front yard of the Deerfield Drive property turn into a suburban jungle of weeds and debris, she decided enough was enough.

Last month, Hendricks took matters into her own hands and started pulling weeds. As she started working, neighbor Karen Emory noticed.

"She asked if I had been hired to clean the yard," Hendricks said. "I told her it was just bothering me, and she felt the same way."

In Richmond's Richmore Village neighborhood, a small group of residents armed with weed wackers and lawn mowers are tackling the front yards of abandoned properties, cutting knee-high grass, pulling weeds and collecting trash. They amass enough trash to fill as many as 10 bags in about an hour. Their slogan: "If not us, who?"

[Muttocracy]

1. insult to injury - the most unfair part of housing crisis is the impact on neighbors. nt

[Cronus Protagonist]

16. Yeah, they have to do lawn work to protect their large investments

Me, I'd be happier if they paid someone to do it out of their obviously superior wealth. THe economy would work better too, and I don't feel sorry for people who have to do that either. I run a business. If the guy next to me is a slob, I have to clean the sidewalk (people shit on my front door at night, people from limousines, chicks piss there too), and no one starts a sympathy thread for my business problems. Not that I want one, and these real estate investors don't deserve sympathy either. Good luck to them, but sympathy? No.

I have more sympathy for renters, workers and poor people.

[Muttocracy]

19. Sounds like you do want sympathy. Many homeowners are "workers"

and if you've worked hard to buy a home, but your new neighbor got some risky mortgage they couldn't handle, skipped out on it, whatever, that hurts you through no fault of you own.

I don't know anything about the particular community in the article above, but what I've read about the situation in Cleveland is quite sad, and is not about people with "obviously superior wealth".

[hack89]

20. So workers and working poor don' t own houses?

every neighborhood in America is affluent and full of people with "obviously superior wealth"?

[Hekate]

21. Well excuuuuuse me. Mr. H & I bought our SMALL home & worked like dogs to pay it off.

There's a similar home down the street from us that's been foreclosed on, and we've kind of lost track of who the owners are (they moved, then there were renters-- a really nice Mexican family with three boys and now they've moved out). But whoever they are I pity them.

"Obviously superior wealth"? WTH are you talking about? If a business next door to yours goes belly up and the property starts to look bad, will you lift a finger to hose off the sidewalk out front? If I catch you at it, should I walk by and sneer at YOU for your "obviously superior wealth"? Ha! You stinking capitalist!

Kee-rist I hate the leftist version of class warfare.

Hekate

[AlCzervik]

2. all over my neighborhood, dead lawns and white notices taped inside the window.

we have a number we can call to report them and the fines are supposed to double for everyday the vacant house isn't cleaned up. So far we still have lots of dead lawns, for a while the house next to me was vacant so i mowed and watered the grass and then someone finally bought it.

You should see some of the backyards, the green pools are a magnet for mosquitoes.

[Liberal_in_LA]

3. Sounds like your efforts helped the bank make a sale.

[AlCzervik]

4. i couldn't stand it anymore and what worried me was the house getting vandalized.

i figured if i could make it seem like someone lived there the odds of broken windows would go down.

[madrchsod]

5. deserted houses drive down the equity

in the houses around them. it`s in everyone self interest to maintain these properties.

[conscious evolution]

6. Bill the bank that owns it.

If they don't pay file a lien against them.

Edit:Gotta get me dictionary bookmarked.

[exothermic]

8. That's the ticket, lean on 'em!

:rofl:

[flvegan]

9. Good luck.

You're not authorized to lien the house. A Contest filed by the bank would easily win, I bet.

Best bet, call Code Enforcement. They WILL place a lien on the property if they have to do any work on it. And they WILL get paid.

[conscious evolution]

10. Bummer

I do believe you may be right.Gotta check with a lawyer on that one.It would be nice if one could do so,though.

[flvegan]

13. Well

the Contest of Lien would force you (in some states, at least) to actually file a Lis Pendens and make it a court issue, so now you've got a lawyer involved. Plus, they'd just say you had no collective authority nor permission/request to do the maintenance.

Kind of like washing someone's dirty car without them asking. Thanks for the good deed!

As for "it would be nice"...think about it. Slightly overgrown lawn that someone hasn't mowed in a couple weeks. Unscrupulous individual comes along and mows it then files a lien, just because he can. How much is that lien? Or a house that needs paint...screens...

I do see your point, though. Like if you could send the bank a letter telling them to clean up the property with a 30-day compliance window. THEN after the 30 days you did it. That would be a better idea.

[conscious evolution]

15. Thanks for the advice.

[exothermic]

7. We had one of those in our neighborhood for a while. It mysteriously burned down

in the wee hours one morning.
:wink:

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

11. Turn the bank in to the city for code violations.

Then send the bank a bill for the labor to clean their mess up for them..

Are they above the law? Oh... wait a sec... never mind that question.... :cry:

[LiberalEsto]

14. Absolutely right!

I would complain to City Hall constantly until they take action against the property owner, i/e/ the bank.


If the banks want to play the foreclosure game, they should be prepared to pay for the consequences.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

12. it is beginning to bite!

[annabanana]

17. We've been keeping the front lawn of the house next door mowed.

I think the family turned the keys in. (They told us they had sold "no problem" and were moving West to take care of family)

[noamnety]

18. If it were next to me

I would be tempted to put in a vegetable garden in the empty lot.

[Ian David]

22. There was a squatter in the home across the street from us.

First, a drunk guy slept on a closed-in porch.

And a couple nights later, the front door was either broken-in or left open.

After the police came, someone hired a company to mow the lawn for the first time in weeks.

[Ian David]

23. IIRC, under Common Law, if you maintain a property for 7 years, it's yours. n/t

[Ian David]

24. Republicans at the end of the block got foreclosed on. Every cloud has a silver lining.

And then there's THIS guy I photographed in Washington, PA:






See this thread:

Hope! Change! Are you better off now than you were four years ago? (Photos!)
Topic started by IanDB1 on Apr-19-08 11:58 PM (9 replies)
Last modified by WakeMeUp on Apr-20-08 09:26 AM
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=5585721

[madokie]

25. As I do what little local traveling I do I've noticed that the boarded up unmowed

falling into disrepair houses is not price selective either, I've seen the ones with the roofs that look like they go up into the clouds as well as the relatively flat ones, both kinds and all in between, needing occupants.

[KharmaTrain]

26. It's Getting To Be A Real Problem In Some Areas

I was just reading about a nearby town that was in the midst of this latest "boom". It's nearly 70 miles from Chicago but houses were going up in cornfields like crazy. It was one of the few areas that you could still find a 3 or 4 bedroom house and a little land for under $200Gs. The boom started out great...demand for homes outstripped the land the contractors and developers could gobble up and the local municipality started to see dollar signs as well...increased tax revenues from the new homes and nearby strip malls. They incorporated lots of these areas and then paid for major road improvements, police coverage, new schools and so on. It was all put on the tab cause surely the boom of new people and increasing property values/taxes would make everyone rich.

Then came the bust...

Now many projects are either being downscaled or construction has stopped altogether...and the glut of unsold and foreclosed houses is starting to take a bite. Yep, there's the big problem of vacant houses...a lot of them...with little or no upkeep. The banks claim they have too many to watch over and the developers say its not their problem...they build 'em, they don't have to maintain them. Then there's the village that is facing a major cash crunch that promises only to get worse as property taxes/values decline, their overall costs increase and there's an additional demand for preventing these empty lots from turning into cornfields again.

I would drive through this town and saw all the building going on and wonder where all these people were coming from...last week I took the same ride and saw a lot of For Sale and Foreclosure signs...very empty and quiet half-built developments and an eery feeling.