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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2009 > October > 22
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Editorial: Locals can’t wait for others to fix housing collapse
Dayton has had a problem with its houses for as long as a lot of people can remember.
A quarter century ago, home-owners were leaving the city. Sometimes they found buyers for their houses, sometimes not. Sometimes they kept up the houses they left behind, sometimes not. When they rented them out, sometimes their tenants were responsible, sometimes not.
Even then, the city was looking for people to take over houses — at a very low cost — that were empty and in decline.
So when the foreclosure crisis started to hit Dayton — not in the middle of this decade, when most of the country noticed it, but at the beginning — not much decline was necessary to create a crisis.
The city tried to combat the problem with legislation — instigated by Commissioner Dean Lovelace — to regulate the predatory lenders who were pushing mortgages that forced many trusting and responsible homeowners into default.
The state shot down that legislation, only to pass its own years later, when it finally realized what Dayton (and other cities, too) had been trying to tell it about sleazy lenders.
Too little, too late.
Now, things are so bad that banks are not even repossessing some properties they have foreclosed on. They don’t want to pay the taxes or put out for even minimal upkeep. But the people who lived in the houses are gone, forced out.
That leaves a house just sitting, unclaimed, untended — with no prospect for being owned, because of the legal hassles of establishing who can sell it or give it away.
City officials have proposed creating a “land bank.” Under that program, which other cities are trying, the city takes over property that nobody else wants and tries to identify new owners and new uses. That requires money. So far, Columbus has not allowed cities the size of Dayton to establish the kind of cash-flow that might make the project work (although Cleveland has been allowed to experiment).
Still, Dayton is moving ahead, trying to tear down nuisances. Trying to let neighbors have access to these properties for a pittance. Trying, with the help of Montgomery County, to minimize the number of properties that are abandoned.
County Recorder Willis Blackshear, who long ago took the initiative to alert people who might be the target of foreclosures, now is trying to get the word out to people who are getting foreclosure notices not to leave immediately. Leaving their home may not be necessary, and it’s certainly not good for neighborhoods, maybe not even for the mortgage holder.
Meanwhile, John Carter, a Dayton housing inspector, has taken upon himself the task of finding out who actually holds particular mortgages — no easy task in these days of complex financial dealings — and is insisting they do some upkeep. Lo and behold, he has had some success.
Ultimately, Dayton needs fewer buildings. The reduction is hard to paint as progress. But if the city is to have a rebirth, it has to remove the blight, take down what can’t be saved.
The problem at hand is national. But Dayton and, increasingly some suburbs, can’t just sit back and wait for Washington, Columbus and the mortgage industry to get their acts together or for the economy to improve. That much is obvious.
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