Derelict building still plague Syracuse despite years of government work, money and programs.
“Practically each solution the city has come up with has made it worse,” said Phil Prehn, community organizer with Syracuse United Neighborhoods. But he and government officials hold out hope for the latest effort – combination of a land bank and a registry of vacant properties.
The derelict buildings are a worry because they encourage drugs, gambling, prostitution and trash debris.
“It makes it hard for other owners to get homeowners insurance, it devalues the value of the property. It makes it less likely for people to want to move in or open businesses,” said Prehn.
About 1,800 structures in Syracuse are vacant. Most of them are located in the southern and western sides of the city, where 40 percent of houses are vacant.
In the past, Syracuse tried auctioning off tax delinquent properties and selling liens to private companies. But, say some skeptics, these just seemed to make the problem worse. City officials are hoping the new Syracuse land bank and the vacant property registry will help to reverse that and create a more sustainable housing environment. But some homeowners and landlords still doubt this is the right way to go.
Among the efforts and their results to solve Syracuse’s vacant-building problem:
Using federal redevelopment programs
In 1974, Syracuse began receiving federal funding in the form of the Community Block Development Grants. At the height of the program, the city received almost $15 million a year. That number has kept dwindling to the less then $5 million it receives now.
“It was never enough to deal with the scale of the issue,” said Paul Driscoll, commissioner of the Department of Neighborhood and Business Development. “We could maybe hit 100 properties – either rehab them or demolish them.”
Auctioning off tax-delinquent properties
In the 1990s, the city began the auctions. The city would seize the property and on the same day sell them in an auction. It quickly gave the city money.
But, Katelyn Wright, a land use planner with the bureau of planning and sustainability, said the solution was not permanent. “Folks would come in from out of town, and they were buying the property sight unseen,” said Wright. “Sometimes they would come in and see that the property really wasn’t salvageable and it would just end up in the auction next year.”
Selling Tax Liens
When the auctions failed, the city turned to selling the tax liens on the tax delinquent properties. A tax lien allows the city to claim the property for unpaid taxes. The city sold them for close to 90 cents on the dollar to American Tax Funding Services, a company based out of Florida.
But the company had no connections to the neighborhoods of the city of Syracuse, recalled city officials. So the company just aggressively pursued the delinquent tax payers but did not improve the properties. Again, Syracuse quickly got the cash, but the vacant properties persisted and grew.
Creating The Land Bank
In 2012, Syracuse started a land bank. It is a non-profit, semi-governmental entity that will seize tax-delinquent properties after foreclosure. Once the land bank owns the property, it puts the property up for sale.
Land-use planner Katelyn Wright, is temporarily the staff of the land bank. She argues the land-bank project will have a better outcome than auctioning these properties off.
“The land bank would maintain the property and sell it to a responsible buyer,” said Wright. “So we think we could have the best of both worlds here with good outcomes for our neighborhoods and a better tax-collection rate.”
The land bank is looking for would-be local people with an interest in the community and with the ability to take care of the property, Wright said. Buyers would also be able to come in and look at the properties before they buy them. That, said Wright, is already drawing them to the properties.
“We’ve gotten lots of inquiries from folks that know that a property is slated for the land bank and they want to know how they can go about buying it,” said Wright.
So far, 400 homes have received foreclosure notices for over-due taxes. If those homeowners can’t pay their taxes by July, their properties will be the first owned and sold by the land bank.
Creating A Vacant Property Registry
Only one-third of Syracuse’s derelict properties are tax delinquent. So to help deal with the other two-thirds of vacant properties, the Common Council in April created the Vacant Property Registry, a measure proposed by Mayor Stephanie Miner.
The registry will require homeowners to register vacant properties with one or more code violations and pay a fee for being on this list. These fees will increase every year the home remains vacant and code violation aren’t fixed.
Paul Driscoll, commissioner of the Department of Neighborhood and Business Development, says this will help to offset the city’s costs to upkeep the property. “The city would have to mow the lawn, board up the windows, make sure it’s not a fire hazard,” said Driscoll. “So it takes manpower and effort on behalf of the city to make sure that vacant property isn’t a danger to the properties around it.”
Along with the annual fee, Driscoll said, the city is asking owners to give a plan for what they intend to do with the property and give permission to allow police onto the property.
“If someone is in the property or on it in their absence, the police can do something about it because right now the police cant go on private property unless they are called to it,” said Driscoll.
Driscol argues that these new programs could be the answer the city has been looking for. “It’s not dependent on federal money. It is steering more private money into the mix which is much more sustainable,” said Driscoll.
But some homeowners and landlords have doubts about the registry. Carlotta Brown, a Realtor and president of Central New York’s Landlord’s Club, wants the city to stop what she calls “villainizing” landlords and instead convince people to move to the city.
“The city itself needs to promote that Syracuse is a great place to live. They don’t,” said Brown. “If you look around, does it say anywhere that Syracuse is a great place to be, enjoy Syracuse?”
Most of the people who can afford to live in Syracuse instead choose to live elsewhere in Onondaga County, she said. And making property owners on the register pay more fees, she predicted, will only make the problem worse.
“Most of the people by the time they’ve gotten to that point, they don’t have any money,” said Brown. “So giving people an additional fine – I don’t see where that’s helping anything.”
(Samantha Sonner is a junior majoring in broadcast and digital journalism.)
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