Letters From Here

Something of a philosophical shift also has happened.

In working with Historic Savannah and the Metropolitan Planning Organization, city inspectors and administrators also are recognizing that calling for demolition isn’t the end-all solution.

Instead of an abandoned home, the city ends up dealing with a vacant lot. It becomes quickly overgrown, attracts loiterers and isn’t as marketable as a historic home that, with work, adds unique value not only to the housing stock but to the property tax digest.

Rather than resort to “demolition by neglect,” the groups have been more willing to work together. Sometimes it’s a matter of citations, but other times it’s a matter of offering resources, education about tax credits for historic renovation or finding assistance programs that offer homeowners help with repairs.

“We have an underlying, visible, continual element of deteriorating buildings,” said Tom Thomson, executive director of the planning organization. “Part of it relates to poverty, but I’m guessing a large majority are under-producing income properties, so landlords don’t want to mess with them. It is a big problem. We agree with that, but if it has historic significance, we want to do all we can before we order it demolished.”

The Lot Next Door initiative, spearheaded by the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority, offers buyers as much as $10,000 to restore vacant properties adjacent to their homes, as well as landscaping expertise to help owners turn decrepit parcels into side yards, vegetable gardens and other amenities. The money also can be used to rehab abandoned homes.

A follow up to that story: David Simon speaks out here.

The city has had a demolition by neglect ordinance since the early 1990s. It allows the city to make repairs to endangered properties that have architectural value, and to recoup the cost of those repairs by placing liens on those properties.

That ordinance requires only that the buildings to be boarded up, protected from the elements; preservationists now are trying to find new ways to get these same buildings renovated and put back in use. “That’s the ultimate issue: How do we get beyond a boarded-up building?” Thompson said. “We need to create an environment, a set of incentives that connect people with projects to make them work.”

Carolyn White of the East Side Community Development Corporation said she would like to see a new website that property owners could visit to get advice on maintenance, dealing with foreclosure, livability issues and others. Marvetta Daniels, the corporation’s president, said part of the problem is that homeowners fear that if they make repairs, their property taxes will rise and they will lose their home.

South Carolina cities have the option of capping property taxes on renovated properties, but Charleston is not among those that have done so. Winslow Hastie, the Historic Charleston Foundation’s preservation director, said the city and preservationists need to intervene earlier — before a building is are about to fall down.

In the push to rebuild from Hurricane Katrina and eliminate eyesores, officials unwittingly approved the demolition of the childhood home of jazz great Sidney Bechet.

It is just one of more than an estimated 9,000 houses, sheds, structures and former businesses across Houston deemed dangerous and in need of demolition. They are, in many ways, emblematic of a city that has grown quickly, erecting shiny new buildings, but leaving behind structural corpses left for dead but never buried. City officials say they don’t have enough inspectors to address all the city’s decrepit structures and the process for getting demolition approved is lengthy, particularly when owners decide to abandon the property.