City tearing down dilapidated houses

City tearing down dilapidated houses



By KATI BEXLEY
kati.bexley@staugustine.com
Publication Date: 06/02/08

As City of St. Augustine workers manually demolished the small, crumbling shell of a home at 124 Bravo St., slowly breaking away the structure's concrete blocks and stacking them on the bed of a pickup truck, neighbors saw it as a good sign.

"I think we're all glad to see the city moving on this," said Peter Romano, Lincolnville Neighborhood Association president. "Everybody in Lincolnville wants the neighborhood to look good and be safe."

The city is tackling the issue of 50 dilapidated, abandoned homes in the Lincolnville neighborhood after clamoring from residents.

In February, city staff put together a list of the 50 homes at the request of Mayor Joe Boles. The buildings were ranked, and the bottom two, one being 124 Bravo St., were set for demolition, said Mark Knight, city planning and building department director. The other home is at 54 Lovett St.

The houses were both found to be in violation of city code, and the Code Enforcement Board told the owners to either fix their buildings or the city will tear them down, Knight said. The property owners decided it would cost too much to renovate the homes, so they agreed to demolish the buildings.

City staff took down the house at 124 Bravo St., by hand to save money, Knight said.

Knight said the city is a doing structural analysis on six other homes to determine if they too could be demolished. Also, the property owner at 158 Twine St., another building on the list, has requested the city tear down the structure, Knight said.

Code Enforcement can act only if the run-down home is unsafe, such as if it were about to fall onto a neighbor's house or if it is a public nuisance, such as a drug house or a homeless hangout. The city can also do minimum repairs to keep the house from falling down and board it up.

About half the homes on the list are owned by families, some of whom can't afford to maintain the homes, and half owned by investors. The houses are spread throughout Lincolnville and not confined to just one section.

The neighborhood has increasingly become gentrified over the last decade with new families moving in and spending thousands, and sometimes millions, to renovate homes.

Some life-long Lincolnville residents, such as Linda James, feel the city made the issue a priority only when new residents complained.

But City Commissioner Errol Jones, also a Lincolnville resident, said that's not what led the city to address the problem. He says public safety trumps the aesthetics of the neighborhood.

"We're asking, is it safe?" he said. "We're not looking at old homes and saying, 'They look really bad; let's tear them down.'"

Mayor Joe Boles also said the city isn't trying to step on people's property rights, but some of the homes have been empty for years, and family members who have inherited the property haven't made improvements.

"Sometimes Grandma's house is in bad shape. Sometimes there's nothing you can do about it," Boles said. "And in these economic times it's even harder to do something about it."

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