Fewer vacant homes in St. Paul
I did that headline the way the television stations do the blurbs for the evening news. It is a bit misleading but more dramatic than the story. We don't really know how many vacant homes there are in St. Paul but we do know how many registered vacant buildings there are.
Currently there are only 1344 registered vacant buildings. Most of them are provate homes. This is way down from what I believe to have been the all time high of 2031 that we hit in September of 2008.
Harris Street house
Some of the homes that were on vacant building list have been rehabbed and sold, others have been torn down and some have been on the list for years. Homes on the list have notices posted on the doors and can not be inhabited until multiple local building code violations are cured. In some cases the cost of doing the repairs exceeds the value of the home, they are held to a higher standard than any other older home.
The city does not require home buyers or sellers to correct code violations when a home changes hands. Violations range from faulty wiring to non existent central heating plants.
There are still plenty of vacant homes that are not on the list. Most of the homes that I show to buyers are vacant. Prior to about 2008 most of the homes I showed buyers were occupied. The number of vacant homes has become a nation wide problem but it is getting better . . slowly.
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Comments
not a fan
Thanks for the comment. No I am not a fan of th registered vacant building program that requires these homes to be brought up to todays building code. The properties are held to a higher standard and in some cases. code enorecment in general in St. Paul is not uniform nor is it transparent. I have complaind bu when I do i am told I am wrong.
Whitewash
Teresa,
I'm not sure if you're party to the whitewashing of this issue - perhaps you've just writing an article about some numbers. That's fine...but there's a huge, ugly story being left on the table here.
In 2008, the city passed its corrosively stupid vacant building ordinance - requiring that vacant buildings be brought up to 2006 building codes - which, for a 1920 house would be a mininum of $100-150,000. For a house that, in Frogtown or the North End or the East Side, might actually net (help me, here, Teresa) $35,000, mostly for the land under it.
What that means is that this city has a glut of buildings, with the price being artificially depressed by both the uncounted mass of vacant buildings and the fact that those buildings get turned around and (if not demolished) sold for a song to rehabbers (often for a dollar).
In the meantime, this city has so few taxpayers left that those of us who still live here and have jobs are getting gang-raped on property taxes.
It made me sick to see our worthless city council throwing a ball to celebrate its inauguration last week. These people deserve to be put on a chain gang.
I love this city. But its government is incompetent; voters that keep returning it to office are worse.
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