Greg Swan wants you to be his neighbor.

After a year and a half long battle with the empty house next door, Swan isn’t even looking for a good neighbor at this point. Almost anyone will do.

“We just want neighbors,” said Swan.

Turns out for Swan, even bad neighbors are a better prospect than no neighbor at all. 

Swan retreives ads from the vacant property next door.Across the country, the foreclosure crisis and the resultant vacant buildings have forced hundreds of cities to examine how they deal with abandoned properties just like the one next to the Swan home. According to Assistant City Administrator Bart Fischer, Chaska isn’t at that point yet.

“We haven’t really discussed it formerly or at length,” he said, noting that the city has received very few complaints in regards to vacant properties.

But while Swan remains in the minority here, he wouldn’t mind if Chaska proactively took up the issue.

Pine Street

Attracted to the charm and character of downtown Chaska, Swan and his young family moved into their 120-year-old Pine Street abode in August 2008.

Swan said they didn’t see much of their neighbors to the north, but the home initially appeared to be well kept up. Five months later it was an entirely different story. Those neighbors had disappeared and Swan’s headaches, triggered by worries about the safety of his family and the value of his home, began.

“We didn’t realize they were ‘gone’ gone until January,” Swan wrote in a blog.  By then, the numerous bags of garbage left behind were creating “a wintry feast for local vermin.” At that time, Swan also noted broken windows and a crumbling retaining wall next door.

In April, Swan believed things were about to turn around when foreclosure papers were taped to the front door and Safeguard Properties came by the board up the broken windows and notify the neighbors that they would be maintaining the property.

“I’ll admit it felt good knowing someone was taking care of the property and was finally going to pick up the enormous trash pile,” wrote Swan. “But they didn’t.”

Swan acknowledged that while Safeguard came to mow the lawn twice in April, they ignored the garbage, simply mowing around it. He began making phone calls, first to Safeguard Properties, then to the city and the police.

Community Service Officer Mariella Garcia told Swan that they had received similar calls but informed him that the police could only enforce ordinances on citizens, not bank-owned properties.

Swan eventually took matters into his own hands, trespassing over to the neighboring home and filling up his own garbage can with the abandoned refuse.

“I simply couldn’t stand it,” he blogged. “And it was clear nobody else was going to tend to the broken glass, open cans and dripping refuse.”

When several more weeks went by without a sign of further grass mowing or garbage hauling, Swan began calling again. Finally, in early June, contractors spent the weekend removing trash, taking paint and paint thinner out of the garage and cleaning up the property.

Diane Fusco, director of public relations for Safeguard Properties, said their goal is to “make sure we maintain the property to the standard of the neighborhood.”

Their “property preservation” process, which kicks in once it has been determined that a homeowner has abandoned a home, includes cutting grass, removing debris, securing broken windows and doors, removing anything hazardous, treating pest infestation, fixing roof leaks and winterizing pipes.

Fusco said that Safeguard Properties was charged with maintaining the Pine Street location from April to September 2009. The Ohio-based company works with thousands of contractors across the country.

“The vast majority of properties are taken care of,” she emphasized.

Fusco said there are industry standards for maintenance, but banks, as well as cities and counties, can impose different guidelines. She acknowledged that it may have taken a month to get the loan servicer’s authorization to cut the grass. Fusco also indicated that she had requested a courtesy review of the property regarding Swan’s complaints.

“It doesn’t matter how many [foreclosures] there are,” she said. “If there’s one in your neighborhood, you care about it.”

Property management companies can be good or not-so-good, said Mary Monteith, assistant director for the Carver County Community Development Agency.

“Last winter when I tried to acquire a property in downtown Chaska, their management company, Showcase REO was pretty efficient to work with,” she wrote in an e-mail. “The sidewalks were shoveled, home was winterized and calls on purchasing were returned pretty quick.”

Monteith said she also went to look at the property next to Swan’s and found grass “almost up to my knees!”

Responsibility

Today, the Pine Street home is finally on the market, but Swan’s anguish continues. The HUD-acquired property is under the care of a new maintenance company. Swan said the sidewalks were not shoveled all winter long and the grass has been mowed only a handful of times since the snow melted. He regularly monitors the house for phone books and other literature left behind despite the posted foreclosure notices.

To date, Swan estimates he has made more than 50 calls with regards to the property.

“If everyone was responsible for what they are responsible for, there would be no problem,” he said.

On his blog, Swan said it is “asinine the city doesn’t have a plan or process for dealing with abandoned properties.”

“It’s been thrown out there a couple of times when complaints about long grass or a messy yard have come in,” said Fischer. “It doesn’t really go anywhere because we haven’t had many complaints.”

City Administrator Matt Podhradsky said that the majority of the concerns they hear are over long grass at vacant or undeveloped properties.

Because they have to “treat private property as private property,” when complaints about things like un-mowed grass come up, the city must first provide sufficient notice to the property owner before they can come in, mow the grass and assess back the costs.

“Even the processes we have to go through can frustrate at times,” said Podhradsky.

Chaska Public Works Superintendent Tim Wiebe said that they’ve already had to move five neglected properties in Chaska this year. He doesn’t like doing it because by the time they’ve worked their way through the red tape, the grass can be high enough to damage their machinery.

Many times the city is unaware that a building is vacant until a change in utility billing tips them off.

“We tend to find out about it just by putting puzzle pieces together,” said Podhradsky.

Monteith agreed that it can be tough to track vacant properties due to foreclosure. After a foreclosure is sold at a sheriff’s sale, homeowners are given a six-month redemption period when they can stay in the house.

“This timeframe is difficult to track as some stay, some walk away,” she wrote.

Ordinances

Other cities in Minnesota have taken steps to get a better handle on their vacant properties and tackle issues like unkempt lawns and sidewalks. Eleven municipalities have enacted vacant property registration ordinances and four more have proposed adopting such an ordinance.

Brooklyn Center passed its vacant property registration ordinance in February 2009 as part of a four-step foreclosure strategy.

Director of Building and Community Standards Vickie Schleuning said that data collection revealed that 80 percent of the vacant homes in the city had code violations while 60 percent had maintenance and nuisance issues beyond that. The statistics, combined with concerns over empty properties providing a haven for criminal activity, provided the rationale for proposing an ordinance to the city council.

“It allows us to identify, track and monitor vacant properties, get a name to be held responsible and provide for abatement if we can’t find one” said Schleuning. “It has also allowed the city to get rid of obvious nuisances.”

Duluth adopted its ordinance in July 2006 in order to require property owners to keep their buildings secure and maintained in a clean and safe condition.

Anoka first adopted a vacant building registration ordinance in 2004 “in response to a number of properties in the city that were vacant and unkempt,” wrote Planning Director Carolyn Braun in an e-mail.

Hopkins enacted its vacant property registration ordinance in February 2010.

In an overview prepared for the Hopkins City Council, Director of Planning and Development Kersten Elverum wrote, “Vacant properties mean fewer eyes on the neighborhood and a reduced sense of community. Vacant properties also pose the potential for vandalism and property damage, other criminal activity, squatting, threats to the health and safety of neighbors and the loss of tax base.”

Under the ordinance, owners of residential property that is unoccupied for 90 or more consecutive days are required to register with the city on an annual basis and pay a fee. The owner must include the period of time the property is to remain vacant and the plan for returning it back to housing as well as an authorization for police to remove any unauthorized persons found occupying the property.

Snowbirds are given exemption under the ordinance, as are homes marketed for sale or homes with valid rental licenses.  

Fees

Across the state, fees for registering vacant properties range from a low of $100 in Albertville to a high of $6,360 in Minneapolis.

In Hopkins, those registering vacant properties are charged an escalating rate starting at $500 a year. If the property remains vacant for longer than a year, those fees jump to $1,000.

“The fees help offset the city’s costs in monitoring vacant properties as well as the time and effort devoted to addressing nuisances,” wrote Assistant City Manager Jim Genellie in an e-mail.

He noted that the cost has “motivated” some property owners to rent their properties rather than leave them empty.

In Brooklyn Center, the fees for registering a vacant property range from $295 for no code violations to $400 for property code violations. Fees are assessed on an annual basis as long as the property is vacant.

Cities that have enacted the vacant property registration ordinance say it has helped.

“The vacant building registration allows staff to address security and property maintenance concerns in a more timely way and provides our public safety personnel more information on these properties should safety or emergency issues arise,” wrote Lisa Vatnsdal, neighborhood services manager for the city of Moorhead which passed an ordinance in 2004.

Brooklyn Center is also seeing benefits in the form of new residents. Keeping on top of vacant properties has helped booster the city’s ReNew Home Purchase Program designed to get empty homes reoccupied with responsible homeowners.

Schleuning noted 400 vacant properties when they started. Today they are under 300.

Because Chaska doesn’t track vacant properties, it is difficult to know just how many exist in the city. Monteith said that there were 29 sheriff sales in the first quarter of 2010 and 50 in the fourth quarter of 2009.

“This obviously doesn’t mean these homes are vacant,” she wrote. “Most stay [until] they find another place to go.”

Schleuning said that she could understand why Chaska may not be ready to look at a vacant property registration ordinance yet if they haven’t received many complaints.

“You have to assess your situation,” she said.

But that’s not to say the issue won’t come up to the council at some point.

“It’s probably is something we should look into,” said Fischer.

-Mollee Francisco, staff writer