Cleaning up Ohio’s Foreclosures

Foreclosure affects many people and families everywhere, whether the foreclosure is caused by the family themselves or others, it is still a hard process to go through. One Medina county family that wished to stay anonymous lived in their home for 6 years. While paying off their mortgage they found out the owner of their home ran into problems and their house was due to foreclose. After fighting the foreclosure for weeks in court the family was notified they had 24 hours to move out. Reporter Candace Monacelli sat down with the mom of this Medina county family and heard how this foreclosure process impacted her family.

Hundreds of Portage County properties fall into disrepair each year. Often the result of foreclosure, the properties tend to fall into two categories: the abandoned and the reutilized. Those left abandoned often become dens for the homeless or drug dealers, symbols of an unhealthy neighborhood. Those reutilized often  become a home or transfer owner, symbols of healthy neighborhoods.

In Portage County, foreclosed properties tend to fall into the first category.

Moving Ohio Forward grant

In late 2013 when Vicki Kline, then Portage County Treasurer, heard about a chance to affect change in the county, she jumped on it. The Moving Ohio Forward grant, a state-funded program that Ohio counties could participate in, gave Portage County $500,000 in funds to clean up foreclosed and abandoned homes. An additional nearly $312,000 grant was also offered if the county could match it. It did.

In total, the county received roughly $1.25 million from the grant in 2014.

 The grant established an agreement between Portage County and the state, with the funds to be used to demolish or reutilize existing residential, non-commercial properties. Todd Peetz, the director of the Portage County Regional Planning Commision, was placed in charge of the process.

 “They wanted to be able to take homes that were causing problems, many of which were abandoned years before the foreclosure crisis even happened. Several of them are falling down, like the old haunted house in the neighborhood, kind of thing. But some of them are more recent,” Peetz said. “It’s hard for a building to go into complete disrepair in the five years from the foreclosure crisis began. But that was really it. We couldn’t take down anything with the grant where people were still living. So we weren’t throwing people out of their houses. That wasn’t part of the grant, and it wasn’t something we wanted to do.”

Land Bank creation

For the grant money to be utilized, some form of an organization needed to be established at the county level to handle both legal issues and the grant money. Kline said that the county commissioners and herself as treasurer chose to create the Portage County Land Bank to handle the grant money. It didn’t need to be created, but Kline said that looking toward the future and other grants, the county needed a formal organization.

 

The Portage County Land Bank, despite not having a formal staff, uses the funds provided by the grant to demolish and reutilize properties suggested by townships and cities within the county. The Land Bank does not actively seek out structures to demolish, Peetz said, but asks each city or village to submit a list of suggested properties that are rundown or blighted. Once that list is compiled, Peetz and other county officials, often including fire marshals and health inspectors, make sure the properties comply with the state regulations for the grant. Roughly 2/3 of the suggested properties were approved for demo, Peetz said.

“Some of the homes were so far gone that the best way to reutilize it was to tear it down and reutilize the property,” Peetz said. “In most cases, I’d say about 80 percent, the people (that said they would repair their properties asked) what do they need to secure the building? So they put new windows, new roofs and new doors. Once they secured the the building so there wouldn’t be mold or so people couldn’t break in, the townships accepted that.”

Demolitions

 Since accepting the grant, the Land Bank has demolished 125 properties in Phase 1, two more in Phase 2, and seven in Phase 3. Peetz said that each demolition cost roughly $7,000, but could have been anywhere up to $20,000 if the property contained asbestos.

Before the structures were demolished, the Land Bank utilized the established foreclosure process to ensure that there were no bank leans, or existing owners, involved. If a bank owned the property, then that bank maintained the rights to it. If the property had an owner, Kline said they were often motivated to clean up their lots if confronted with a pending demolition. Peetz said that the Land Bank, under the Moving Ohio Forward grant, did not and could not legally own any of the properties.

If the residential properties were demolished, the Land Bank would make sure the lot was clean-slated and ready to be reutilized in whatever way the property owner or bank saw fit. That could have been building a new structure, selling the lot to the city, greening the lot with grass and trees, or giving the property rights to surrounding property owners to split, Kline said.

”The idea though is that a clean lot will enhance the value,” she said. “And we would like to encourage them to sell the property, or reuse it for a house.”

 Peetz said that for every home demolished, especially in a residential neighborhood like Kent or Ravenna, the surrounding property values tend to increase by roughly $10,000.

Structures needing to be demolished varied in kind; there was a full-standing residential structure that needed to be demolished, but sometimes there wasn’t enough to meet grant standards. Peetz said the Land Bank looked at each property individually and assessed the need. Hiram Township approached the Land Bank with one property that was simply a pile of rubble, no taller than a foot in height. Peetz said they crushed it further and planted grass, which was all that needed to be done.

Though the process often went smoothly, Peetz said there were instances when property owners were not aware their homes were set to be demolished. For instance, in the village of Mantua, Peetz said that one property owner, a veteran who lived in Florida but who owned the lot in Ohio, threatened to “defend his home and his property” if Peetz set foot on his property again. The state authorized a police escort for Land Bank workers the next time they went out to make sure the fixes had been made. They had been.

 Another property in Windham Township, a series of six units that were combined into one lot, had be rehabbed with pure asbestos in the 1970s. Peetz said the demolition for that unit cost roughly $60,0000. It’s not just asbestos that makes for expensive demolitions. One house was worse in terms of environmental effects.

 ”It was a cat house. The lady won the lottery and the house she was living in she opened the doors and said, here you guys go. And the cats just lived in there for years,” he said. “The neighbors weren’t happy, the house continued to fall down. But that one, the cost to remediate that one because of the cat feces and urine was $25 grand.”

A new grant

Kline said that Portage County recently received word from the state that it was going to receive roughly $525,000 as part of the Neighborhood Initiative Project. With that grant, the Land Bank will be able to acquire properties for itself and reutilize them, instead of demolishing properties and giving them back to the bank, owner or city.

Peetz said that under the new grant, the Land Bank can spend $5,000 to acquire a structure and up to $25,000 per unit to demolish or reutilize it.

Once the Land Bank owns the property, the county must maintain it. That includes everything from paying the taxes to mowing the grass. Everything is contracted out, Peetz said, and they utilize local services to keep the grant money within the local economy.

“I think the land bank is another tool in the toolbox for communities to use. To me, that’s just another resource they didn’t have before,” Peetz said. “I envision a time when the land bank will be working together with local communities to help push a project over the hump.”

Kline said that, growing up in Portage County herself, she has been upset to see the steady decline in property values and curb appeal. The Land Bank and the grants, she said, give her hope for a brighter, more progressive future.

”If you drive around Portage County — I grew up in Ravenna — and I gotta tell you, it breaks my heart to drive these back streets and see these homes. Because when I was a kid, this was a nice town like wonder years of something. The houses were nice and the land bank, we just want to get the houses back into shape,” she said. I think this will be good for economic growth, companies coming in because obviously it’s not attractive when they come into a community and the houses are all dilapidated and these places we took down were actually a health hazard. So I do believe the land bank, eventually, I’m very excited about what it can do.”

 

For a map of demolished homes in Portage County click below. 
Grant money used for each area can be seen below. 

Here are examples of homes acquired by the Portage County Land Bank in Kent, Ohio.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Check out @CandaceMonacell , @MattMerchant7 and @LadyJacquelineD tweets for our project. #kentrpa

For any further details contact any of us at cmonacel@kent.edu , jdemate@kent.edu and mmercha1@kent.edu .