Rosemary Romero maintains the community garden at the entrance to Casa Linda, a 125-home subdivision in the center of town with entry off Cerrillos Road via Monterey Drive. It's a lovely neighborhood, she says, consisting of well-built homes with vigas, oak floors and kiva fireplaces on roomy lots developed by celebrated local homebuilder Allen Stramm post-World War II as affordable housing for returning war veterans. Today, it remains a quaint enclave close to everything. But the neighborhood is being damaged from the inside out.
"We've got four abandoned homes in the neighborhood that people have just walked away from," said Romero, a former city councilor. "The city's nuisance ordinance doesn't address this kind of issue fast enough, and it brings in an element to our neighborhood that's really unacceptable. It's very frightening to neighbors."
One of the homes is owned by a living trust, two are in pre-foreclosure proceedings and the fourth, which Romero says is the most egregious, is in foreclosure and owned by JPMorgan Chase Bank.
That house has roof damage and is exposed to the elements, and will likely need to be torn down, she says. Recently, police arrested a man who broke into the home and ripped out copper wire.
"The saddest part is that house is right across the street from Kaune school. The United Way is moving its pre-K program there, yet there's this derelict house across the street," she said.
Romero said she and the neighbors she talks to when tending the garden or on her daily walks are concerned that it will only get worse if nothing is done about it.
The city's process is too slow, she said, allowing the problem to fester and grow. And once a home goes into foreclosure, the city has been reluctant to act, and the banks that take over the title aren't helping the situation.
"The banks aren't being responsible homeowners. When they own it, they just sit on it," she said. "There's got to be another way to do this. If it's happening in Casa Linda, it's probably a problem in other places, too."
It is, and the city is looking into finding another way. At a meeting earlier this month, the City Council's Public Works Committee decided that a task force should be formed to evaluate the city's laws regarding abandoned and dilapidated homes, and those considered nuisances due to excessive rubbish and debris. The task force is supposed to report back to the committee in 60 days.
"Our process needs to be re-worked if we want to address this effectively," said City Councilor Peter Ives, who volunteered to serve on the task force.
Crime magnets
Right now, the process isn't very effective — or efficient.
At that same Public Works Committee meeting, Noah Burke of the city's Land Use office said what Santa Fe has in place to deal with such homes is a resolution passed in 2006 that outlines procedures for removal of a structure determined to be "a menace to the public comfort, health, peace or safety."
At the end of the process, for the city to remove any building that is determined ruined, damaged or dilapidated — or any premises strewn with rubbish, wreckage or debris — another resolution approved by the City Council is required, "and seven steps in between," Burke said.
Land Use Department director Lisa Martinez said proceeding with removal can result in a "huge expense" for the city and is a time suck for the many departments that get involved, including Land Use, Public Works, Housing, the City Attorney's Office, the Fire Department and, when somebody rips out the copper wiring, the police.
"All these abandoned properties result in a fiscal drain and provide little or no revenue to the city coffers," she said. "And there needs to be coordination between the vacant property manager and tax collectors."
Martinez said that, in the past five years, St. Louis has spent $15 million to demolish buildings and other cities have spent millions to clean up trash-filled lots.
Abandoned homes are also crime magnets, she said. "By all accounts, these properties are considered a curse," she said, adding that they can become drug dens or, at best, eyesores.
In an interview afterward, Martinez cited more statistics. She said that a study in Austin showed that blocks with vacant buildings have 3.2 times as many drug crimes, 1.8 times as many reports of theft and twice as many violent crimes as blocks without vacant buildings. She said that more than 12,000 fires break out in vacant buildings each year in the U.S., usually the result of arson, causing more than $73 million in property damage.
Concerned about the fire risk, increased crime in their neighborhoods, unsightly trash-filled lots and decreased property values, neighbors complain to the city. But if a home is in foreclosure, "there's not much we can do," Martinez said.
Fielding complaints
A prime example is a home on Calle Feliz, which was the subject of an investigative report by KRQE-TV's Larry Barker earlier this year. The home has been in foreclosure for years and is now owned by Deutsche Bank National Trust Co. The occupant, who described himself as a "collector," filled his front yard with assorted items and cars in disrepair.
Neighbors complained, but the city said its hands were tied.
While Assistant City Attorney Zachary Shandler said the home was in clear violation of the city's nuisance ordinance, a decision was made not to enforce it until the ownership issue was resolved.
The TV report was mentioned during the Public Works meeting earlier this month. City Councilor Ron Trujillo, whose district includes the home on Calle Feliz, expressed frustration over the matter. He said he has fielded complaints about the home from his constituents since he was elected to the council in 2006.
"Twelve years later, I'd like to have an answer for them," he said.
In a phone interview, Trujillo said he feels that not enforcing the ordinance because the home was under foreclosure seemed like an excuse.
"Even I was told (that) once something goes under foreclosure and goes through the district court, the city's hands are tied," he said. "What needs to be done is we have to decide what the best process is so we can put that process in place and get the results we want to see."
Since the Barker report, the city issued a citation against the occupant of the home on Calle Feliz for excessive litter and junk cars, and the yard has been cleaned up.
Assistant City Attorney Alfred Walker said one obstacle in getting homes condemned is that the people who complain about them are reluctant to provide witness statements or testify in court because they don't want to get that involved or cross their neighbor.
"It makes it impossible to proceed any further. For a judge to decide, people need to come testify," he said.
Walker cited one recent case in which neighbors did go to court to testify against an occupant of a home on Alejandro Street about excessive noise and suspicious activity at the residence. The home ended up being sold "and I understand the neighbors are happy," Walker said.
No tracking system
A distinction can be made between dilapidated and abandoned structures, and problem properties.
Land Use director Martinez said the city has had numerous complaints about problem properties and currently has on file nine complaints for junk vehicles, 58 for littered or unsightly yards and 57 for overgrown weeds on private property.
The number of complaints about neglected homes is much smaller. Land Use staffer Burke provided the Journal with a handful of addresses for homes that have received complaints. In each case, he said the department was working with property owners on taking corrective action.
Three of them are older homes within a few blocks of each other on well-traveled Paseo de Peralta and near the state Capitol. Complaints concerning two of the properties, both unoccupied, involve transients breaking in and unkept yards. Renovation work appears to be underway at one of the properties.
The third, at the corner of Paseo de Peralta and Galisteo, about two blocks from the Roundhouse, is owned by a family trust and occupied by at least one of the family members. There are cracks in the stucco and peeling paint. Burke said complaints have been made about weeds, litter and debris in the yard.
"There have been concerns about how beautiful the home is and people don't want it looking that way," Burke said.
What's more, it's listed by the city as a historic structure so can't be torn down and any changes or alterations to the exterior of the building would have to be approved by the Historic District Review Board.
Burke said he has seen an uptick in complaints about abandoned, neglected and dilapidated homes in the past few years. But the only structure he can recall being condemned by the city is a former seafood diner next to the Stagecoach Inn on Cerrillos Road, "and that was a commercial property," he said.
There's no good way for the city to track abandoned homes and some cities require homeowners to register their properties that fall under scrutiny, Burke said.
He's looked at ordinances used in Las Cruces, Rio Rancho and one being worked on in Albuquerque that the task force will review and use as templates for a draft ordinance in Santa Fe.
Meanwhile, Romero and her neighbors in Casa Linda are hoping something can be done soon before the problem gets worse.
"This is really an issue, so let's see what we can do about it," she said. "This is a great little neighborhood, but it's got this big cloud over it now."
