City looks at all angles to address nuisance properties

A property care team to be activated in 2024 is one of the chief proposals of the city of Springfield’s Nuisance Property Work Group. Rental inspections are another.

A slate of ideas was put forth by the work group in a presentation to Springfield City Council at a lunch meeting in May. Many of those are expected to take the form of action items in upcoming meetings.

“We’re trying to connect people to the resources they need,” the group’s co-chair, Rusty Worley, said in an interview with Springfield Business Journal. “We had a large, diverse group who worked on this and committed several months to it, and that was indicative of the interest in the community of trying to be more proactive in dealing with nuisance properties.”

It’s all part of a multifaceted approach to tackling the nuisance property problem in the city, which has averaged 3,000 complaints annually in recent years, 71% of those in rental housing.

Vacant properties cut into the existing housing stock, which city officials have acknowledged as a concern with a gap of over 8,000 housing units needed. The work group’s efforts dovetail with the city’s selection to participate in a national training program, the Vacant Property Leadership Institution, later this year.

Currently, the city’s Building Development Services Department bears most of the responsibility for handling nuisance properties. A proposal by the work group would bring in the city’s Public Works, Fire, Police and Health departments, agencies, faith-based groups, neighborhood associations and other nongovernmental organizations to help address the situation.

Pete Radecki, chair of the work group’s subcommittee on existing ordinances, told council, “If we equate nuisance property management with BDS, we’re touching only a part of that picture. I think they do a great job, but there’s a lot more to be dealt with.”

Radecki said the city’s process for dealing with nuisance properties starts with a neighbor complaint and a subsequent site inspection. Alerts are made and reinspection follows. If the issues continue, the city may complete the work and place a tax lien on the property to pay for it.

The property care team approach would interrupt that process by introducing a cause determination exercise after the initial site inspection. The resident or owner would be contacted to determine if help is desired, and if so, the property care team would be called in to work with the owner to establish a timeline for the remedy plan.

Radecki said that’s all before a citation might otherwise be posted.

The resident or owner would be dealing with an individual from the care team, who Radecki compared to a punter on a football team.

“How many plays is the punter on the field in football? He’s on the team, but he’s not engaged all the time,” he said. “It’s more a list of who would be appropriate to engage on whatever the particular topic happens to be on a given violation.”

Rental inspections
Becky Volz, the chair of the work group’s new strategies subcommittee, presented council with a proposal to establish rental inspections in the city. She did a study of the largest 20 cities in Missouri by population, plus those with a college and similar demographics to Springfield.

She found 70% of those cities conduct rental inspections, and 10% are in the process of approving a program.

Volz said many people living in subpar rental housing do not complain about safety issues for fear of eviction, which is why an inspection program is so important.

Mayor Ken McClure raised a concern that rental inspections could bring undesired consequences.

“Inspections are a very slippery slope,” he said. “The consequences may be ones that we do not intend. For example, someone fails, the tenants are evicted, they become homeless, our homeless population increases.”

Councilmember Craig Hosmer was in favor of rental inspections.

“I think that we do have an obligation to inspect rental property if somebody’s renting property in the city of Springfield and it’s substandard, it’s unsafe, it’s a fire hazard,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of substandard housing that’s being rented to people that are living in housing that they shouldn’t be living in.”

The work group has requested City Council establish a residential nuisance position at a cost of $100,000 from city funds, plus a property care team to be coordinated by a city point person.

The group also seeks $15,000 to fund site visits to explore the feasibility of rental inspections.

New strategies
Brock Rowe, director of the city’s BDS since November 2022, said he advocates what he calls a Mayberry approach to solving nuisance properties. It was a reference to the classic television program “The Andy Griffith Show.”

“Everybody helped everybody,” Rowe said. “They tried to make their friends’ and their neighbors’ lives better instead of trying to make them miserable.”

He added that nuisance property problems can come about because of a resident’s physical or mental health problems, cost issues or a number of other reasons. In a case of overgrown grass, he said a neighbor might reach out, find out why someone hasn’t mowed a yard and perhaps help them tackle the problem.

“We’re all in this together,” Rowe said.

Rowe expressed enthusiasm for Springfield having been chosen to send a delegation to the Vacant Property Leadership Institute in mid-November.

Rowe’s office processed nearly 18,000 nuisance-related code enforcement cases from January 2015 to December 2020, though figures are trending downward. Most cases are concentrated in the northwestern part of the city, topped by 1,851 complaints in the Westside neighborhood, 1,657 in Grant Beach and 1,419 in Woodland Heights.

“When I first started, there were a lot of really bad houses, but it’s getting better and better,” he said.

The institute, a program of the Center for Community Progress, is a training program that equips leaders with skills to address vacant, abandoned and deteriorated properties for the benefit of their communities.

Ten cities were chosen. The other Missouri participants are Columbia, the city of St. Louis and St. Louis County.

Rowe said BDS is looking for new solutions.

“We’re trying to figure out a different way to approach things, instead of doing what we’ve always done,” he said.

He said BDS gets criticized sometimes because of how long it can take to correct a problem, but people have property rights, and legal action can take a lot of time.

“People should have due process. That’s what’s great about our country,” he said.

He gave the example of a house at 1101 W. Walnut St. that was the subject of more than a decade of complaints. That house is under new ownership, and it is being fixed up to be a viable part of the city’s housing stock again.

The Walnut Street house is emblematic of change that is happening throughout the city, he said.

“Some good things are happening, and my goal is to be a helper and not a hinderer,” he said. “Our focus is to protect Springfieldians and make Springfield amazing.”