08-23-2007 City begins first wave of abandoned house demolition

Home Browse Search

fence. The initial 16 demolitions come from all segments of the city, with nearly half occurring on the southeast side. Costs average about $5,100 per property. This wave of demolitions is being funded entirely by the department's 2007 demolition budget—resources that will be increased more than six-fold as a result of the city's new three-year vacant and abandoned housing initiative. "We're pleased that this concentration of resources to address the problem of abandoned houses will enable us to make a visible impact in all city neighborhoods," said Catherine Toppel, director of code enforcement. "We're ready to ramp up demolition dramatically in the coming months with targeted resources from the vacant and abandoned housing strategy." Code Enforcement officials will open bids again in September on the next wave of demolition, which will be funded entirely by $500,000 in reprogrammed federal Community Development Block Grant funds that were released to the city in late July for this purpose. The funds were originally assigned to Community and Economic Development projects, but remained unspent after the projects were completed under budget. CDBG resources will allow for about 15 to 20 demolitions per month for the next three years. "By using Community Development Block Grant funds only for demolition, there's no income requirement associated with those properties," Toppel said. "The city can sell those properties to developers, adjacent homeowners or neighborhood groups without income limitations." There now are 116 properties on the department's list of abandoned properties that have cleared all legal hurdles for demolition. None of the properties is owned by the city, but Code Enforcement has obtained authority to demolish the properties because of their unsafe conditions as regulated by the Indiana Code. The overall demolition list features properties from each quadrant of the city, although the more than two-thirds occur west of Michigan Street. Here are the properties and percentages represented in each quadrant (with Washington and Michigan streets serving as the dividing lines): • Northwest—50 properties—43 percent • Southwest—31 properties—27 percent • Southeast-21 properties—34percent • Northeast— 13 properties— 11 percent Structures are scheduled for demolition in eight of South Bend's 11 ZIP codes. Two west side ZIP codes—46628 and 46619—account for nearly half of the 116 properties, while a south-central ZIP code, 46613, has 20 percent of all structures scheduled for demolition. Here is the number and percentage of properties represented in each ZIP code: ■ 46601 (central city)—9 properties —8 percent ■ 46613 (south central)—23 properties—20 percent ■ 46614 (far south side)— 1 property—less than 1 percent ■ 46615 (east side)—3 properties—3 percent ■ 46616 (northwest, east of Portage)— 11 properties —9 percent ■ 46617 (northeast)— 12 properties— 10 percent