By Leslie Collins
Northeast News
May 11, 2011

City officials are listening to Northeast residents and taking action.

As nuisance properties continue to increase in the Scarritt Renaissance neighborhood, city inspectors are watching closely with the help of Communities Creating Opportunities (CCO).

CCO held its second meeting at St. Anthony’s Catholic Church May 4 regarding nuisance properties in the Scarritt Renaissance neighborhood. Both community and city leaders were present.

During the April meeting, attendees toured the neighborhood and were given a 10-page list of nuisance properties.

“A lot of the properties (on the list) we didn’t have open cases on,” said Raymond Herzog, code enforcement supervisor of Kansas City’s Neighborhood Preservation Division. “That means no one called to our department or the Action Center to complain about it.”

Most of the cases involved weeds and trash and notices have been sent to property owners and occupants, he said.

City code inspectors will return to the properties May 16 and if code violations aren’t remedied, the citation(s) will be turned over to the city’s new Nuisance Abatement Program, Herzog said.

Once a property code violation is turned over to the abatement program, a city-hired contractor will clean up the property within seven days. Residents are charged an administrative fee of $180, plus the cost of clean-up. Last year, property owners paid $500 on average, Herzog said.

Before the abatement program, the city was tied to writing only tickets.

“Now, the city has the tools where we can physically clean property up,” he said.

The high cost of city clean-up is an incentive for homeowners to clean up the property themselves, he added.

Nathan Pare, Neighborhood Preservation Division Manager, said his division is working to take a proactive approach by identifying nuisance properties before they’re turned in. Pare also turned over the list of land trust properties in Scarritt to a city-hired contractor, who’s in the process of removing the trash and mowing the yards.

“Probably 30 properties are being done in a matter of days, so that’s a huge impact,” Pare said of the land trust properties.

For some properties, Legal Aid of Western Missouri will be able to file lawsuits on behalf of the Scarritt Renaissance Neighborhood Association, Amber Trizinski of Legal Aid said.

Trizinski explained several options.

One option is to file an Abandoned Housing Act lawsuit, which stipulates the property must be vacant, delinquent on taxes and have code violations. If the neighborhood association wins the case, then the property title will be transferred to an investor or group who’s willing to rehabilitate the property, she said. Another option is a nuisance lawsuit, which forces the owner to fix the code violations. Other options include filing a receivership case or utilizing urban homesteading, she said.

Leslie Caplan of Newhouse said some owners might be willing to donate properties to St. Anthony’s Church.

Trizinski agreed and said the best way is to negotiate with the owner about donating the property.

“In the end, we just want people in homes who are responsible,” Trizinski said.

Attendees voted to concentrate on improving a block along Anderson Avenue and plan to knock on neighbors’ doors in Scarritt to talk about resources, like grants, to improve properties and also ask those with well-maintained properties to encourage neighbors to do the same.