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City to raze 900 vacant houses
Feb 23, 2012 (The Columbus Dispatch - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
Columbus plans to spend $11.5 million over the next three to four years to demolish 900 houses that city inspectors have deemed dangerous and uninhabitable.
The city has never spent so much to tear down vacant and abandoned houses, but the problem has become such a threat to the viability of neighborhoods that the city has to act, Mayor Michael B. Coleman told The Dispatch yesterday.
"These 900 homes have got to go, got to be demolished, in order to protect the safety of our neighborhoods," Coleman said.
The demolition plan is part of a comprehensive effort the city is creating to deal with vacant houses, including rehabilitating some, preserving land and aggressively pursuing emergency demolition orders. Coleman and other city officials will detail plans today at an abandoned South Side house.
Columbus has more than 6,200 abandoned houses, most of them concentrated in the Linden, Franklinton and Hilltop areas and on the Near East Side and the South Side.
Last fall, Coleman told city development officials to send out code-enforcement officers to determine which houses must come down.
"We knew there was a big problem," Coleman said. "It was very clear that the problem had outgrown our ability to handle it."
Some houses are in the city's land bank, but others have private owners or are bank-owned. Coleman said the city will continue to pursue tax foreclosures and file nuisance complaints in court to acquire more properties.
The city would use capital funds, which are separate from the general operating fund, to pay for the demolitions.
Coleman said the city will spend $2.5 million this year and the rest over the next three or four. The City Council will vote on this year's capital budget and plan in April.
Coleman's staff has briefed City Council members and plans to talk to neighborhood leaders about the plan.
The city also has asked Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine for some of the $75 million the state set aside for demolitions from its $335 million share of a recent nationwide settlement with the country's five largest lenders. Those lenders were being investigated for foreclosure and mortgage abuses.
Coleman said Columbus' share could supplement or replace the city's demolition money.
Councilman Zachary M. Klein, who leads the council's development committee, said many frustrated residents spoke during a January hearing about abandoned homes blighting and hurting property values in the neighborhoods.
"The money set aside, coupled with the (attorney general's) settlement, is going to be terrific for the city of Columbus," Klein said.
Some neighborhood leaders can't wait.
"Get these awful, blighted-looking places gone," said Bruce Warner, a community leader in Franklinton.
Others say tearing down every house is a mistake. Kathleen Bailey, who leads the Near East Area Commission and the South of Main block watch, and others have tried to persuade the city not to demolish a fire-damaged Wilson Avenue house.
She said the block has no vacant lots, and she doesn't want any.
"We said it's worth saving," she said.
Currently, the city is using $3 million in federal neighborhood stabilization money to tear down houses. By early January, it had demolished 139 houses with that money.
It also had torn down 46 buildings through code enforcement from 2010 through November 2011 at a cost of $255,151.
mferenchik@dispatch.com
___ (c)2012 The Columbus Dispatch (Columbus, Ohio) Visit The Columbus Dispatch
(Columbus, Ohio) at www.dispatch.com Distributed by MCT Information Services
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