Cities stuck with vacant houses are seeking help

Taking control of decaying houses can take years.

COLUMBUS (AP) — City officials and lawmakers are trying to find a way to seize control of houses that have been abandoned without the usual wait for lengthy foreclosure proceedings.

The Ohio House this month passed a bill 90-2 that would require a sheriff to quickly register deeds of those buying property at foreclosure sales. The idea is to make it easier to track down those responsible for the houses.

Seizing control of vacant, decaying houses can take cities years, delaying help for cities’ poorest neighborhoods.

Columbus City Attorney Richard Pfeiffer is pursuing a plan that would give Ohio’s big cities the power to foreclose on such properties even if the cities do not hold liens against them.

“We’re not being communists, taking people’s property,” a former environmental judge, said. “You’ve walked away.”

State Rep. Mike Foley, a Cleveland Democrat who co-sponsored the bill, said he has talked to several lawmakers about steering it through the Senate next year.

The proposals are intended to ease the impact on inner-city neighborhoods of the subprime-mortgage crisis that has resulted in scores of foreclosures. Columbus now has about 4,100 abandoned homes, compared with 3,200 last year.

Pfeiffer, a Democrat, has spoken to state Sen. Steve Stivers, a Columbus Republican, about taking his proposal to the Ohio Legislature. Stivers said he plans to introduce a bill next month.

“When somebody abandons their property, they need to understand they’ve given up their ownership,” Stivers said. “We get cities stuck with cleaning up properties that are in a long process for foreclosure. The process shouldn’t take three years.”

Pfeiffer said the city would wrap all the liens against a property — such as back taxes or mortgages — to file for foreclosure.

Any money collected after the foreclosure would go to the creditors, he said. “We don’t want your money.”

He estimated it still would take 18 months to get properties to change hands.

“It gives the city a way to return properties to productive use when we don’t otherwise have standing,” said Assistant City Attorney Robert A. Beattey Jr., who drafted the provisions. “It’s cheaper for the financial institution to just let it sit there.”

However, state Sen. Tim Grendell, a suburban Cleveland Republican, said that though he hasn’t studied the bill and supports getting rid of urban blight, he wants to ensure that homeowners’ legal rights are protected.

“Even someone who is being foreclosed for tax liens has the right to due process,” said Grendell, who has battled government expansion of eminent domain rules. “You still have to provide minimum notice and due process.”

In many neighborhoods with vacant houses, private investment has dried up, so government has to step in, Pfeiffer told a group of Ohio Housing Conference attendees before they toured revitalized homes on Columbus’ west side.

“Capitalism is saying, ‘Your neighborhood has failed,’” he said.