By Leslie Collins
Northeast News
March 7, 2012

Vacant properties continue to plague Kansas City, including Historic Northeast.

They attract crime, slash properties values, and act like a parasite, sucking the life out of neighborhoods.

“I get a little upset about it,” said Independence Plaza Neighborhood Association President Lee Lambert about driving by vacant properties. “We’re trying to find some way of getting them taken care of. It’s just dragging the neighborhood down.”

Lambert estimates his neighborhood houses at least 30 vacant properties in addition to the 24 land trust properties. According to a study conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, more than 12,000 vacant properties exist in Kansas City. City officials, however, are hoping to lower that number through a Kansas City land bank. Legislation to adopt a land bank has already passed in a Missouri House committee.

Establishing a land bank would help the city strategically manage, purchase and sell properties to return them to productive uses. A city-appointed commission of five to seven members would oversee the land bank and its purchases. Instead of the city holding property, the land bank would hold property, simplifying the process and making it easier to work with charities and other nonprofits like Habitat for Humanity, said City of Kansas City Public Information Officer Danny Rotert.

Currently, the Jackson County Land Trust can purchase tax delinquent properties, but only if no other buyers come forward, said Rotert.

“It’s very hard to be strategic that way,” he said of the Jackson County Land Trust.

With a land bank, the city could competitively bid on tax delinquent properties and aim to purchase groups of properties at one time to make more of an impact on neighborhoods.

In addition to expediting the sale of vacant properties, a land bank would also have control of who it sells the properties to. If the land bank doesn’t like a bidder’s plan for the property, the land bank doesn’t have to sell the property, said David Park, director of the city’s Neighborhood and Community Services Department.

Putting property in the hands of those willing to rehab and improve properties could potentially save Park’s department both money and man hours in terms of property nuisance abatement, Park said.

Establishing a land bank also coincides with Mayor Sly James’ proposal to systematically rebuild blighted neighborhoods six square blocks at a time. The city would remove blight, tear down dangerous buildings, rebuild and repair infrastructure. Lots could be filled with in-fill housing, community gardens or parks. Rehabbed or newly built houses would go back on the market and proceeds from those sales would be placed into the land bank account.

“It all goes to a more holistic approach to neighborhood revitalization – not one house at a time, but (improving) blocks at a time,” Rotert said.

How we got here

The number of vacant residential properties in Kansas City covers the gamete from properties simply in between tenants to houses still on the market to abandoned properties, said Park.

“They’re vacant for a number of reasons,” Park said. “The number of vacant and abandoned properties has increased over the last three or four years primarily because of the number of foreclosures that hit nationwide.”

With the burst of the housing market bubble, more houses are remaining on the market for longer periods of time. Those property values become even more depressed when vacant properties begin to attract crime and vandalism.

“It gets less feasible to repair them and put them back into use,” he said. “They may not be worth what it would cost to put on a new roof, for example. Numerous studies have been done that show a foreclosed and vacant house can lower the property values of adjoining properties by 10 percent. Then, if you get two of them on the same block, it just compounds it.”

Both Lambert and Scarritt Renaissance Neighborhood Association President Leslie Caplan know first-hand the negative effects of vandalism on vacant properties.

“We definitely have some (vacant properties) that are huge concerns to the neighborhood. There are certain streets that are worse than others,” Caplan said. “They’ve been terrible havens for crime and gangs to the point where neighbors are scared – they can’t go outside.”

Some vagrants are living in the vacant homes, Caplan’s been told, and she witnessed one of those incidents herself – next door to her house.

“It (squatters) happened next door to me. It creeps you out. Who wants to live next door to a house where you don’t even know if someone’s looking through the window at you?” she said.

That same house was broken into four different times, stripped of its copper and 120-year-old fixtures.

“It’s just been really devastating,” she said. “It was a pristine house – one of the most pristine I’ve ever seen.”

Now boarded up, the house is an eyesore that sends a message to outsiders that the neighborhood isn’t safe, Caplan said.

Lambert listed several examples of vandalism, including a duplex at 705 Prospect that’s been fully stripped of copper and has become a place for the homeless to sleep. Then, there’s 1230 Benton Boulevard that’s been stripped at least three times in between renters and 1228 Benton Boulevard has also seen its share of woes. The owner painted his copper pipes white to deter vandals, but the thieves finally figured out his trick and stripped his property clean of copper. The owner was in the process of trying to rent the property, Lambert said.

In addition to stripped copper, vacant properties are also magnets for fires – whether it be arson or the carelessness of a squatter.

In 2010, the Kansas City Fire Department responded to 132 vacant structure fires, and in 2011, that number jumped to 157, said Lew Hendricks, public information officer for KCFD.

Both Caplan and Lambert support the city’s push for a land bank.

“At the Independence Plaza neighborhood, we’ve always been in favor of them getting the land bank,” Lambert said. “I’m hoping that will help us see these lots getting taken care of better.”