07-25-11 Council Agenda & Packet

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Area Board of Zoning Appeals—June 1, 2011 MS. PFEIFER: No I don't know. But I can look at that one, the property in the back, the third property, caught on fire and has been sitting there burnt out all this time. A burned out property boarded up. And the one in particular does not look very attractive at all. And so I don't see why we should believe that a person that would neglect a property, lose it on a tax sale, why we would have any say that they're going to take care of it. And I think you know the article in the paper talked about all the beautiful homes that we have. We actually just sold a house a very nice house on the corner of Jefferson and Laurel. We're trying to get young people and maybe some people not quite so young to move in who want to be property owners you know and cut the grass and take care and be good neighbors. They have not been a good neighbor. And so anyone who is a good neighbor we support them. I think you all know that neighborhood. We've got apartments, we've got the group homes. We're not "not in our neighborhood type of people." We want very simple things. We want to you to cut your grass, we want you to pick up the trash, we want you to act as if you had to live next door. And I don't think that's asking too much and there's no reason for us to relieve that a vacant property that would be lost to a tax sale that they now deserve the right to redeem it and then just kind of pick up where they left off. We have no reason to believe that they're going to do it. The other thing to is there are plenty of vacant houses in our neighborhood and you drive by them and you wouldn't know they were vacant. That's a house that's well taken care of. This one if you drove by you know it's vacant. MR. PHIPPS: Ms. Pfeifer may I ask a question also? MS. PFEIFER: Yes. MR. PHIPPS: I think we'd all like to do what's best for the neighborhood but I'm just struggling to understand how refusing them permission to upgrade this and possibly letting it remain vacant would be a help to the neighbors. Are you assuming that South Bend Heritage or someone else would buy it and then re-hab it? MS. PFEIFER: Well I can give you a perfect example. Right next door, the house we're talking about, then there's a beautiful historic apartment house, it's beautiful and then right next to that is a vacant house and about two years ago South Bend Heritage in fact wanted to tear it down and make it a duplex and the neighborhood again said we would, it's a beautiful home actually and it has some artistic significance, we would rather see it sit vacant until there is someone who would come along and do what we want to do in the neighborhood rather than just kind of settle and let people do what they want. You know once you let someone have a property and you let them do what they want with it, it's hard to get rid of it. I'd refer you to Bull's Eye, I mean we could talk for a couple of hours about some of the problem properties in South Bend. Once you let an owner who does not have, who hasn't shown you. I don't know this individual so this is not personal, I mean I don't know him at all. All I can go by is what I see. And so if I see you not doing a good job, if I see you disrespecting the neighborhood, I don't have any reason to believe that now you're going to change your mind. We know that once a person does what they want to do then we're stuck. And we've been stuck too many times in that neighborhood. We the neighborhood organization have a real clear vision of what we want in our neighborhood and we would rather see it sit vacant until someone comes along and will run it and own it and take care of it the way we in the neighborhood take care of our properties rather than take a risk on someone who let a property go on the tax sale and didn't take care of it. 19