

When 'Right-Sizing' Vacant Properties Goes Wrong - Mz
http://www.citylab.com/housing/2014/08/when-right-sizing-vacant-properties-goes-wrong/375416/

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LordKano
The power of government can be terrifying, when it's turned against you.

It would be nice to have a third-party opinion from someone who lives in
Clarksburg to fill in the details that this article is missing.

It's not possible to tell if this guy is really a victim of overbearing local
government or a shady businessman who finally had his underhanded practices
catch up with him.

~~~
powertower
To put it into context, from what I've seen before -

1\. The mentioned owner probably paid less then $500 per house.

2\. There was no real improvement nor investment made in/to those houses.

3\. This was all about squeezing rent out of dilapidated properties, that were
at the same time keeping everyone else house prices down.

~~~
cpwright
He still paid the $500. If he was keeping current on his taxes, and the house
was not an attractive nuisiance, there is no reason they should be demolished.
If they were condemned, he should have been compensated for them.

There is no reason he should have to make the house "nice", it should simply
be habitable. It shouldn't leak, the walls should not be structurally unsound
(in my town that is among other things defined as more than 30* out of plumb),
there should be adequate egress, and in the winter months working heat.

The only thing he seemed to have a problem with was working heat; but was
going to have a professional come and fix it. The town then prevented him from
fixing it before the hearing; pretty much ensuring that the tenant couldn't
live there and he would lose.

There should be a much higher burden of proof on the governments part, before
someone is relieved of their property or its productive use.

~~~
Perdition
They were demolished for building code violations according to the article. A
process that took many months and many meetings with a tribunal.

The question is whether you believe this guy was a victim of political
corruption, where city officials targeted a competitor. Or believe the
government side that he was a slumlord. Both seem equally likely given the
evidence in the article.

~~~
cpwright
I guess I find that demolishing the house should take more than a few months
or planning committee meetings. I think that an independent judge should have
to be involved in anything that deprives someone of their property.

I actually think a major component of the problem is property taxes that are
too low. If there were minimum assessments on a lot, or alternatively a
minimum assessment on a structure; then the landowners would be properly
incentivized to put them to good use; or they would naturally revert to the
town after several years of non-payment.

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mabhatter
My town is on an aggressive knock-down strategy as well. One problem they ran
into was people trying to "save" houses on the chopping block after the tax
sale. Since then they are clearly tagging the houses where the PROPERTY is for
sale but the HOUSE is condemned.

In certain neighborhoods, the city wants the excess houses GONE. They don't
want them fixed up and barely hanging on.. The city wants to collect enough
empty lots that NEW BUILDING is worth while... And just sit on empty lots
until then.

The problem for somebody like this owner.. When is he city happy to take your
tax sale money but leave the block on their "knock-down" list.. And why isn't
the list more public.. Who's getting benefits of knocking Dow YOUR HOUSE but
not others?

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cratermoon
Absentee slumlord gets his comeuppance, claims corruption and sues. What's
news here?

~~~
nathanb
But wait. If the article is correct and the city's population dropped by half,
I would expect there to be hundreds if not thousands of legitimately vacated
and abandoned properties. Why would the city go after a slumlord's properties
instead, even if he is an absentee landlord known for ill-maintained rental
houses?

(And it also seems that a city which has dropped so significantly in
population would be a poor location for a true slumlord to prey, since I would
expect it to be a buyer's market.)

I am not sure it's as open-and-shut as you portray it.

~~~
webnrrd2k
Just a guess (and a rather cynical one): so they could get some money out of
the owner. He's the one with the cash, so he's the one to target.

~~~
Shivetya
no, sadly it reads like a political power play. Someone is the system decided
they would use their power in government to fix things and this guy was an
easy target. He had some homes, some with problems, but obviously no real
means to fight back.

See this way to often, people get in office or a position where the public
really has little to no real ability to push back. They can do exactly what
they did to this guy, take your property or prevent you from using it until
you just cannot afford to keep up the fight. If they lose, they will just try
later or keep going on someone else. There is no penalty for the majority of
abuses by government functionaries, none. People think cops get away with
murder, they haven't see jack

~~~
noir_lord
This pretty much describes how you end up with a Killdozer.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZbG9i1oGPA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZbG9i1oGPA)

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rtkwe
With the complete lack of details about the state of the plaintiff's
properties there's no way to take an informed side...

------
Mz
At one time I was studying to become an urban planner. The article caught my
eye because of the opening:

 _At the end of May, a task force convened by the Obama administration
suggested that Detroit needs to "right-size" its housing stock. That’s a
phrase often used in reference to cities that have spent decades in the midst
of population decline; in Detroit’s well-documented case, it was a city built
for more than 1.8 million people that’s now home to about half that number.
The task force suggested the city should tear down 40,000 properties left
vacant in the exodus._

It seems to me the detailed story about what happened in Clarksburg is a _case
study_. It is unfortunate that the article never returned to its opening
thought to make a real point related to Detroit (using the case study to
support the point). But as someone who founded and ran a sub-forum on Cyburbia
for a time and who, thus, used to talk a lot with people who enforced city
codes, etc, this looked to me like a cautionary tale and a suggestion that "If
things can go that wrong on such a small scale, surely we need to be concerned
when something similar is being suggested by the federal government for a city
the size of Detroit."

~~~
gulfie
People just need to rewatch robocop.

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lafar6502
What's the property law in the US? If you own a house, don't you also own the
parcel where it's built? How can a city destroy a house that has an owner, or
is built on a private land?

~~~
Pxtl
Same reason a city can crush your car if you use it improperly. Your property
is a responsibility because it does not exist in isolation. If you fail to
live up to that responsibility, the city must take over the responsibilities.
That may include destroying a fundamentally unsafe and unusable structure that
exists on your property.

If you can build a house in an impermeable bubble located in low Earth orbit,
I'll agree you can do whatever you want within that bubble. As long as your
property shares the same landscape and air and ecosystem as my property, I
care what you do with yours.

Ever lived next to a dilapidated home?

~~~
lafar6502
Well, this is so nice - instead of asking you to fix the building or demolish
it on your own the city will bulldoze it for you and hire the lawyers in case
you have some objections that need to be handled. But what's exactly that law
- what's an 'improperly' used house? Can they demolish it if your heating
isn't working? Leaking roof? Broken window?

~~~
wavefunction
Housing codes determine what is acceptably "habitable" and what is not. The
laws are also more strict when the residence is a rental property, as American
society would like to discourage absentee or delinquent land-lords and help
protect tenants from bad situations where your land-lord is supposed to be
maintaining a property but instead tells you to "go live with a relative" when
the heat is out.

~~~
cpwright
For demolition it shouldn't matter if it is a rental or not. If it would be
habitable by an owner; then it shouldn't be demolished. The tenant may be
evicted or he could be fined or something; which is fine, but he should still
be allowed to attempt to market the house as a single family residence.

