THREE WAYS THIS MATTERS TO YOU
1. Demolishing vacant, unkempt properties can help prevent crime and raise surrounding property values.
2. Hamilton taxpayer money is being spent to: match grant money used to demolish blighted properties; spend on property maintenance; pay to purchase properties available for sale that the city wants to buy; and invest in the nonprofit economic development agency CORE Fund.
3. Hamilton has acquired nearly 200 properties since November 2012, for a total 1,768 parcels owned by the city. Local residents could be neighbors with the city.
For many who live in Hamilton, their next-door neighbor could be the city.
Through a series of acquisitions, nearly 200 properties have been transferred to the city government’s books during the past two years. It’s largely due to an aggressive program to raze foreclosed, abandoned properties to reduce blight. During that same time, more than 160 homes have been demolished including city-owned and other buildings, according to Kathy Dudley, city prosecutor.
Demolishing vacant, unkempt properties can help prevent crime and raise the value of nearby properties, according to some. But others contest that taxpayer money should not be spent to maintain a growing number of properties.
Approximately 173 of the properties new to the city’s portfolio were acquired for free through donation or by obtaining title to foreclosed properties. While taxpayer dollars were not spent to buy these mainly residential parcels, taxpayers do pay for increased costs of property maintenance and to match grants to pay for demolition.
When asked if the city should be in the real estate business, Eric Vincent, president of the Investment Property Owners Association of Butler County, said, “The other question is should the city be in the lawn mowing business or not?”
“They’ve got to maintain all those properties. Many of the properties the land bank has bought, they knock the house down,” Vincent said.
“The financial times are not that great, so the property owners next door don’t want the property because they don’t want to have to pay the taxes on it. So who cuts the grass? The city,” he said.
But the city is not only acquiring foreclosures.
Tens of thousands of dollars are also spent to buy properties that become available for sale, typically commercial properties. For example, two vacant properties adjacent to the Chinese Lantern restaurant on Main Street are owned by the city, purchased earlier this year for a combined $42,500. Those building caught fire in July and the damaged buildings have since been demolished, leaving behind more parking space for the local restaurant.
The properties the city buys are for economic development purposes, road projects and other long-term projects, said City Manager Joshua Smith. During his October State of the City address, Smith referred to public and private investments in Hamilton and said, "without capital investment, Hamilton would never move forward."
"I can't think of any property that we've acquired that we have the intent of sitting on," he said in an interview last week. "The important thing is we bought key properties, and without them, we would not be talking about Kettering (Health) going into Elder-Beerman, Sara's House into the Hungry Bunny building."
"Jeff Thurman (president and CEO of nonprofit Community First Solutions) told me that his $6 million project would never have gone into Ringel's if we had not made the progress downtown. These things don't just exist in a vacuum," he said.
All told, best estimates are that the city of Hamilton owns more than 1,760 parcels in Butler County including right of ways, public parks and utilities, as well as the newest acquisitions. A search conducted using the Butler County Auditor’s Office website shows 1,173 property records for Middletown and 341 records for Fairfield. Butler County owns 483 parcels.
“Just to have pockets of land here and there, no it’s not beneficial because today’s zoning won’t allow you to put anything on that property, so it’s just useless space,” Vincent said.
Due to zoning codes, Vincent says many of the now-empty lots are not big enough to build a new building. He also acknowledges that he doesn’t know a better solution to solve problems with blight, wreaked by the foreclosure crisis.
City Councilman Rob Wile says property owned by the city is not for profit or speculation.
“City acquisitions are made only in the advancement of the strategic plan for economic development/infrastructure purposes or for the protection of property values for our residents through blight removal/neighborhood stabilization,” Wile said in an email.
“Typically, the properties acquired were long ago rejected by the private sector and often left in a dilapidated condition. The city should not and does not compete with the private sector,” he said.
Land bank fuels property transfers, demos
In 2012, the Butler County Land Reutilization Corp., or land bank, was formed to acquire blighted properties and tear them down, in efforts to prevent crime and boost surrounding property values.
Land banks are quasi-governmental, nonprofit organizations that can acquire abandoned, tax-foreclosed or other real property clear of titles and tax liens. Initially, it acted as a pass through to transfer properties and grant money to Hamilton and Middletown; Butler County government did not authorize funding to go to the land bank until June 2014.
Hamilton and Middletown in May that year received approximately $1.35 million each ($2.7 million total) to spend on title searches, environmental surveys and demolition costs. The cities matched the grant with $1.1 million each.
The grant program that awarded the funds, Moving Ohio Forward, was created by the Ohio Attorney General’s office and funded by Ohio’s share of the National Mortgage Settlement for foreclosure abuse reached in 2012 with the nation’s largest mortgage servicers.
Through the land bank, Hamilton obtained mainly mortgage and tax foreclosures, properties that go to the county sheriff’s auction twice. The properties with no bids are forfeited to the State of Ohio, but properties can be transferred to Hamilton at the city’s request, Dudley said.
Once the property is demolished, the city can sell the land, keep it for city purposes, or adjoining property owners can request the land, Dudley has said. To date, the city has picked more than 50 properties it says it wants to keep. Another seven have been sold — sales prices vary from $0, $100 to $1,000 — and recorded with the auditor’s office.
Hamilton also receives properties by donation, can demolish properties declared public nuisances by a court, or do an emergency demolition for buildings deemed hazardous.
“I know a little bit about what they’re doing and I’ve got mixed emotions about it,” said Hamilton Realtor and broker Coyt Rains.
“I know there are some houses that are beyond saving and need to be torn down but there’s other ones; the last five to six years, the real estate business has been through a tough time. People got in a position where they couldn’t keep their properties up, but they’re not junk. That upsets me,” Rains said.
Most recently, the Butler County Land Bank received a new infusion of cash, $2 million from an Ohio Housing Finance Agency grant program. Those funds were approved in August, and are expected to lead to the demolition of 100 more properties each in Hamilton and Middletown in coming months, Butler County Treasurer Nancy Nix previously said.
Properties the city pays money for
The city has invested in real estate with “one-time” money that is best spent on capital investments rather than operating budgets, City Manager Joshua Smith said.
“We are doing what every other major city (from Toledo to Canton to Cleveland) is doing — leveraging the available state funds to eradicate the worst of the worst homes in our community, which are draining our resources — both human and financial,” Smith said.
“Our abandoned properties have been decimating our neighborhoods, redirect the attention of the few sanitarians that we have from addressing even basic nuisance issues, take the time of our stretched thin Police division due to nuisance/drug issues at abandoned properties and our Fire division, where many of our (approximately) 150 structure fires are at abandoned properties,” he said.
Two departments have permission to purchase commercial and residential properties that come up for sale within a certain area, Smith said. The Electric Department purchases available properties located in the “Little Italy” subdivision west of the Third Street Power Plant, and Public Works purchases those in the area of Grand Boulevard where the South Hamilton Crossing will go when construction tentatively begins in 2016.
Utilities Director Doug Childs said that for at least the past 10 years, the department has used electric funds to purchase property in anticipation of future development west of the power plant. Removing houses put up for sale in that area will help create a noise barrier, if and when large redevelopment occurs, he said.
“From the redevelopment look of the property down the road, that area is not the best use for residential property,” Childs said.
Jessica Senters has lived in the 800 block of North Second Street for nearly nine years. More than five grassy lots line her street where houses once stood, and more lie around the corner on Third Street.
“When I moved here, all of these empty spots were houses,” she said. “I guess when they want to take (the block) completely, I’ll just have to move.”
She said that while she and her neighbors aren’t too impacted by the city purchases, they wish they could use the lots to improve the community.
“We’ve asked the city if we can rent the empty property lots to make a garden, and they tell us no,” she said. “Why not let the property be used if it’s just sitting there?”
Customers of Speedy’s Drive-Thru, 809 N. Second St., have told employee Zach Holland that people would come and sit on the stoops of the abandoned houses before they were purchased by the city.
“People are mostly happy about (the demolitions),” he said.
Some property purchases were discretionary spending, Smith said, citing 926 and 1083 High St., 967 and 969 Main St, and properties acquired for the CORE Fund. The High Street properties were purchased for work related to the East High Street Gateway project; the Main Street properties were bought out of concern for the viability of neighboring businesses including Chinese Lantern at 965 Main St.
City Council is aware of and approves these discretionary and departmental property purchases, Wile said.
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