"Why I hate DC" or the appropriate tactical strategy to apply to nuisance properties/ disinvestment is investment, not demolition

"Why I hate DC" is a blog. I don't ever read it, I don't have a link to it. I don't like the attitude.

But I can sympathize, at least some of the time.

Here's an example:

From "Fenty Orders Eckington Demolition That Was Already Ordered in 2006" in the City Paper:

Adrian M. Fenty is the closest D.C. has ever come to an imperial mayor. ... On April 23, the mayor appeared to be at it again. On a walk-through of Eckington, Fenty fixated on a “once beautiful, but very dangerous Victorian house,” as described in an e-mail from Alice Thompson, the mayor’s outreach coordinator for Ward 5.

The home at 1811 3rd St. NE was a dilapidated gray house with a spacious front porch, a sizable lawn, and a serious problem with squatters. According to the e-mail, it was “by far the worst property he had seen.”

And so the mayor acted. “He told [Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs] to have it razed immediately,” she wrote in the note, sent to a Ward 5 Listserv and Sarah Latterner, director of community relations and services in the mayor’s office.

Roughly two weeks later, on May 6, that’s exactly what happened. The building was scheduled for demolition. Even in the ever-more-efficient District of Columbia, that’s epic turnaround.

So is this just another Fenty power move?

Nah. What Thompson failed to mention in her adulating note was that the Board of Condemnation and Insanitary Buildings had already ordered the building condemned and razed a long time ago. Not earlier that month. Not earlier this year. Not even the year before. In late 2006.

So this pretty unique building is gone. (Image from Google Street View)

There is an excellent entry in Tsarchitect (humbling really, it's so well written) about the bits and pieces of history that remain within today's built environment (buildings and urban design), and how this can inform us about the past--if we pay attention. See "Street, Time, and Place." (A book on this broad topic is Stilgoe's Outside Lies Magic.)

The now demolished Victorian building in the Eckington neighborhood was a remnant of the time when the area north of Boundary Street (now Florida Avenue) was Washington County, when the City of Washington, Georgetown, and the County of Washington made up the "District of Columbia" (after the City of Alexandria and Alexandria County, now called Arlington County were retroceded to Virginia). It's likely a house more out of Washington County's rural past, when it was farms (called market gardens then) and estates.

Map of the Washington area, 1888. Note that the City of Washington is depicted as an urbanized area, while the area outside of the core is shown as a more rural like area. I believe that in 1890, the U.S. Census determined that the entire District of Columbia qualified as urbanized, and the city and county were merged soon after.

Instead of this building still standing as a marker of very different period of Washington's history, it's gone.

I've had the pleasure of hearing Mayor Joseph Riley of Charleston, South Carolina speak about the value of beauty (and historic preservation) in cities, and how one must be ever vigilant to preserve and extend urban beauty and livability.

Never would Joe Riley's first inclination be to demolish a historic (even if not designated) building.

The appropriate solution to "cure" a nuisance property is not demolition, but investment. It is investment that is the "cure" to disinvestment.

Demolition just creates a different problem, an empty lot that needs to be filled--and that usually takes 5 to 15 years at a minimum, even in strong real estate market periods.

Below is a blog entry from 2008, which repeats in part a blog entry from 2005, which in turn is based on testimony I gave to DC City Council in 2002(!).

The short-term solution for the now demolished building was receivership to get the house back in shape. See how it can be done in the State of Ohio, below...

In DC, our leaders aren't paying attention to what really matters, and they have an incredibly short term view that ought to be sending them to Wall Street, not politics.

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Receivership for Housing

is something that I testified about before the DC City Council beginning in either October or November 2002, I kept it up for a few years, but stopped testifying about it a couple years ago. Today's Post, in "District Planning Push Against 'Slumlords': Court Will Be Asked to Name Special Code Enforcer" reports that Acting City Attorney General Nickles is calling for receivership of multiunit buildings to cure "nuisances."

Below is a blog entry from 2005, which includes excerpts from past testimony about receivership. A couple years ago, I had communication with CM Graham, who indicated that receivership capability already existed.

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The Baltimore Sun reports on the yanking of a certificate of occupancy for a multi-unit apartment that is the site of a great deal of disorder. Northwestern Police District Deputy Major Mary Ellerman is quoted as saying "The only way to rid this area of the problem is to demolish." See "City targets landlord in new tack to rid apartments of drugs, guns."

What about receivership?

Take over the building and get it running right.

It is possible.

This way you displace 20+ households and leave a building to a worse fate. And tearing yet another hole in the fabric of the neighborhood does no one any good.

406 H Street, vacant for more than 20 years.
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From previous testimony to DC City Council on these issues (with particular concern about historic properties)

1. Shortsighted nuisance abatement policies too often lead to demolition of historic properties.

Despite the demand for housing in DC’s core, many properties remain vacant, tied up by speculators who are aggressively unconcerned about how their behavior harms nearby residents and entire neighborhoods. Too often, demolition-by-neglect is used as a tool by speculators to assemble property for large-scale development and the conversion of predominately residential areas to commercial use. In the meantime, our neighborhoods are held hostage. When these buildings come down, it’s easy to think that since we have thousands and thousands of historic buildings, losing one doesn’t make much difference.

It does. Every demolished building becomes a vacant lot—negative space—defined by neglect.

Condemning a building and ordering it razed does not abate a nuisance. It simply creates a new nuisance just as persistent, damaging, and long lasting.

2. A Revised Nuisance Property Law is Necessary

In our opinion, the primary tool that the City employs to abate nuisance properties is demolition. Whether or not this is the intent of Council is unclear, but the fact is, by default, the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs is setting prevailing neighborhood stabilization policies through its regulatory activities, and their actions appear to lean towards the razing of properties, rather than the promotion of rehabilitation and habitation.

Not only does tearing down a property destroy unrecoverable assets, it creates a new nuisance in its place, one even harder to abate. While it is true that housing inspections, "Clean it and lien it" and other fines and sanctions exist, such sanctions have impact only if property owners are truly interested in maintaining the building. If not, a property owner prefers to let it rot, and fines will have no impact. A property owner committed to “demolition-by-neglect” can afford the middling fines. The fine for demolishing a building illegally is only $500–chump change to someone trying to build something new that might not otherwise be allowed. By contrast, consider that in San Antonio, fines and penalties for demolition by neglect and illegal demolition are set at the cost of reconstruction. “Market value” fines are likely to be strong deterrents.

While the DC Council passed a new law concerning vacant and nuisance properties, it is unclear how successful this law will be in practice. I am not hopeful.

(a.) The law puts great demands on the Executive Branch, particularly the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, and it is evident through its words, deeds, and staffing that this agency is unable to meet these new demands.

(b.) Many DCRA inspectors lack critical expertise in assessing historic properties including critical structural engineering expertise, and they appear to be under-concerned about the importance of urban design and form. Given that more than one-third of buildings in this city are more than 60 years old, this knowledge deficit critically under-serves the city. The fact is, most properties can be rehabilitated, in most cases for less than the cost of razing and clearing a property and building new. To be fair to DCRA inspectors, they cannot be expected to know this if they aren’t trained in these assessment techniques, and if the system is stacked in favor of demolition.

(c.) The new law requires the identification and provision of monies to support the creation and operation of a revolving fund for property acquisition and rehabilitation. Money has not been forthcoming, paralyzing action in the interim.

(d.) Despite the existence of current laws requiring maintenance and habitability, many properties seem to escape the notice of inspectors for years and years, until finally the owner requests a demolition permit.

(e.) The Board of Condemnation of Insanitary Buildings, an entity within DCRA, is responsible for the abatement of nuisance properties but it tends instead to simply order their razing. Again, housing policies at the highest levels of the District government should favor the rehabilitation of historic properties, particularly houses, for many reasons. The “out of sight, out of mind” BCIB is perhaps operating in ways counter to the expectations of the City Council.

(f.) With regard to BCIB, it is troubling to discover that while this once was a board made up primarily of citizens, with a limitation of no more than one-third government officials, today the board is comprised predominately of government officials from DCRA, DPW, DHCD, and the Department of Administrative Services. Such officials are susceptible to lobbying by property owners and their representatives, and it is likely that these officials don’t always seek to have the properties independently evaluated by professionals with specific expertise in the stabilization and rehabilitation of historic properties.

While the Vacant and Nuisance Property Act does allow the District Government to take control of properties, this provision is unfunded, and it is likely that this authority will only be used once properties are too far gone to rehabilitate. In short, where are the real tools to take control of properties in order to stabilize and rehabilitate them, in situations where the owner has evinced no desire to maintain them in a habitable condition? This is especially important in DC where so much of the residential housing is attached. The beautiful rows of houses that make our neighborhoods so distinctive are endangered and adjoining residents are at special risk when a single row house becomes a nuisance.

Demolition punches gaping holes in the streetscape, and radically degrades neighborhood character. This kind of demolition of undesignated but eligible properties is going on all over the city and is counter to the neighborhood stabilization and improvement initiatives that the Council and Mayor endeavor to implement.

It is essential that the City Council revisit these issues. The Vacant and Nuisance Property Act and the Housing Act of 2002 are not yet enough to ensure that properties are being rehabilitated rather than destroyed. Agency actions need to be consonant with the desire revitalize neighborhood residential and commercial districts.

3. A Model Receivership Statute For Proactive Abatement of Nuisance Properties is Necessary

One way to address defects in current laws and regulatory activities is for the Council to pass legislation authorizing the appointment of independent receiverships able to take control of properties in order to abate evident public nuisances. Fines and inspections aren’t enough. And, the failure to fund the revolving fund authorized in the Vacant and Nuisance Property Act shows the necessity of identifying and allowing other interested parties to act proactively to revitalize and stabilize our neighborhood residential and commercial districts.

All the many activities that the DC Government is engaged in to restore our neighborhoods and bring people back to our city, from the City Living Campaign to the DC Main Streets program, are undercut by recalcitrant property owners who feel no obligation to maintain their properties. Acting only after a neighborhood suffers years of avoidable neglect fails all of us committed to a livable city.

I have lived in my neighborhood for most of 16 years. There are properties that were boarded up when I moved here – former corner stores and large and small houses, and commercial buildings on H Street–that are still boarded up today. Meanwhile a great deal of renovation is going on, and housing prices have as much as tripled due to increased interest and confidence in the neighborhood as a result of the construction of a new subway station on the northern edge of the neighborhood. But that has had little impact on absentee property owners with no motivation or desire to improve and/or sell their properties, or those trying to assemble large tracts of land for redevelopment.

(The new Class 3 property tax assessments will make a difference. But there are loopholes that property owners are using to avoid being categorized as a Class 3 property, and because these properties carry extremely low assessments due to their dilapidated condition, it may take longer than we wish to have the impact we are looking for—to have property owners put the properties back in play, because it is too expensive to let them sit.)

Nuisance properties degrade our neighborhoods and abet disorder. These “vacant” buildings tend to be problems and eyesores–places for illegally dumped trash to pile up and for loitering, squatting, drug use, prostitution and the like. With the enactment of a receivership law, these buildings can once again contribute to their neighborhoods.

The State of Ohio has a strong Receivership Statute that allows nonprofit organizations to petition the local Housing Court with a plan for the abatement of an identified public nuisance. (Ohio Revised Code; Title 37: Health-Safety-Morals; Chapter 3767, Nuisances; Section 3767.41, Buildings constituting public nuisance; action to enforce regulations; and receivership.)

The Cleveland Restoration Society uses this law to take control of properties that are being "demolished by neglect" and takes forceful action to stabilize and/or to fully rehabilitate the property. They are motivated to do this to preserve buildings in historic districts—but the effect is preservation and stabilization of Cleveland neighborhoods.

The Housing Court can clear title once the nuisance is abated, and the property can be sold to people who agree to live in and maintain the property. Covenants in the sales agreement ensure that the property will be maintained and protected. The best way to abate a nuisance is to fix it and get the house lived-in. Long term, receivership may be one of the best ways to preserve, stabilize, and revitalize our neighborhoods. And judging by how the program seems to be working, independent receiverships are likely to be more effective and more neighborhood-oriented and open to community participation than a program like the Home Again Initiative.

It is important to recognize that in Ohio, title is cleared only after the nuisance is abated. Too many nonprofit organizations in DC have been known for acquiring vacant properties, and then letting the property disintegrate further. In Ohio, receivership plans have deadlines, and unsuccessful receiverships are terminated, making it unlikely that the organization will be able to be in the position of being awarded receivership control of other nuisance properties.

Receivership could be one of the best tools we have to preserve houses—affordable houses—and neighborhoods in the District of Columbia. Without it there is no real way to force the hand of property owners who otherwise have no intention of maintaining habitable buildings. The option of receivership, with the ability to clear and award title to guarantee resale and habitation, would give residents and community organizations the ability to be proactive, rather than reactive and helpless. Besides, having the authority to force receivership will be a strong encouragement to absentee landlords to sell, rather than to sit on their property, and otherwise risk the chance of losing their property without gain. Either way, our neighborhoods win.