City hashes out process for vacant properties
Bakersfield city government is making progress on a new system for addressing chronically vacant and nuisance properties such as homes that have been inhabited by squatters who end up damaging or even burning down properties belonging to absentee owners.
A City Council Planning and Development Committee meeting Monday hosted a discussion of options for handling problem properties in the quickest and most effective way, potentially including receivership or foreclosure, without spending an inordinate amount of public resources.
During about the past year, according to staff, the city has torn down 17 buildings that had long been vacant and whose owners have been unresponsive to blight conditions seen as detrimental to the surrounding neighborhood, as determined by repeated calls for service from firefighters and local law enforcement.
The idea is to prioritize a list of 40 to 50 properties where conditions justify staff intervention. Standardized steps are being drawn up that would lead toward not simply removal of the structure but rehabilitation for the benefit of the surrounding area.
The nuisance created by troubled properties has gained greater attention lately as more and more homes and other structures burn down or suffer major damage at the hands of vagrants. Ward 2, which includes the downtown core, is seen as the part of the city most impacted by such problems.
City Hall’s proposed budget for next year includes money to hire two additional code enforcement officers who would be assigned specifically to a team of staff members addressing these problems.
While work remains to be done, and official decisions await, staff were able to point Monday to an achievement in the form of a receiver being court-assigned to
take responsibility for a residence located downtown at 2205 20th St. That property has been the site of repeated fires set by people who did not have the owner’s permission to be on the premises.
Receivership is one option, and as staff noted, it isn’t always feasible because the property in question might be worth less than the amount of money owed on it. Another alternative is to have the property declared blighted and ready for demolition, which staff noted can open the door to new problems, such as people camping on the site without permission.
Another possibility discussed Monday was having the city buy a nuisance site, which would then be classified as surplus property. Although federal grant money is available to help fund such work, City Manager Christian Clegg noted there’s still work to do before that sort of activity can be carried out in a systematic way.
At Monday’s meeting, City Councilman Bruce Freeman, of Ward 5, and Councilman Bob Smith, representing Ward 4, raised a series of questions about options for moving forward. Committee member Patty Gray, the councilwoman for Ward 6, was absent from the meeting.
A staff report prepared for the meeting noted that lien forgiveness was another option for promoting rehabilitation of problem properties in cases where a site has accumulated so many penalties for lack of maintenance that the sum ends up weighing against private investment.
Many questions raised and answered Monday deal with how to proceed through the receivership process, in which a third party agrees to take over a problem property with the intent of selling and making money on it.
City Attorney Virginia “Ginny” Gennaro told committee members the city can typically initiate receivership as necessary but that the process takes time. She added that the option works well only if there’s too much debt on the property.
“Unless the property is super-upside-down, it’s pretty easy to get a receiver,” Gennaro said. One benefit of such an arrangement is that improvements to the property are funded by the receiver, not the city, she said.
Smith emphasized that receivership doesn’t always lead to the desired result, because vagrants may return and light another fire. He noted that the option is typically reserved for a building that can be saved without the need for demolition.
Freeman asked staff whether the city can recover its costs by putting a lien on properties it rehabilitates. Gennaro’s response was that such an approach would make the city liable for county property taxes.
Staff have expressed the view that each problem property needs to be evaluated extensively to determined what series of steps are most appropriate. The plan is to create an evaluation team composed of representatives of Bakersfield Code Enforcement, the City Attorney’s Office and the city’s Community Development Department.