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In Tomahawk Village, a development west of Phoenix, Arizona, residents are attacking crime. Thirty years ago, the community attracted young families and engineers who worked at nearby Luke Air Force Base. But immigration, unemployment, and the housing crisis have rocked the solidly blue-collar Tomahawk Village. Homes have been burglarized and graffiti is a persistent issue. Residents formed a neighborhood block watch to bolster police efforts. Recently, the group has focused its attention almost exclusively on vacant houses. "They're being stripped," says Carol McKeever, 56, a legal secretary who owns a 25-year-old cottage in the community. "At one place, someone had taken the front door off. About ten houses down, same thing. We had another house where the copper plumbing had been ripped out of the sprinkler system in the front yard."
Last April, residents got so fed up that they began keeping a database of all vacant homes in the development. (Currently, there are 275, out of 2,600 total, including seven of ten houses on one street alone.) The database lists whether the property has a pool and security issues like broken windows or fences. McKeever drives every street in the neighborhood at least once a month to update the list and scours public databases for valuable information like deeds of sale and banks holding specific homes in her area.
The database gets sent around to the members of the block watch and also to the local police and neighborhood services departments. "The city of Phoenix has been phenomenally responsive," says McKeever. "If we call in something, like a home with a missing window, they have all the information they need, and they'll be out within a week to board it up." For green pools, Maricopa County will even come out and release minnow guppies, which eat mosquito larvae (though the county won't actually drain the pools). "The pools still look bad, but the guppies keep the West Nile virus away," McKeever says.
Suzanne Thraen has lived with her husband in Tomahawk Village for the past 30 years and serves on the board of the block watch association. She's careful to note that they don't advocate going onto foreclosed properties to clean up, since it's technically trespassing; the association could be liable if a volunteer were to get hurt. "As an organization, we don't do it," she says. "As individuals, we do."
Especially in cases when they've gone through official channels and been rebuffed. "On many occasions, the mortgage company or the real estate agent is just not responsive," Thraen says. She tells of an empty house at the end of her street. "There was a broken window, then a second broken window, then a third. We called a couple of times." Each time, no response. "Then graffiti-the fence had been broken down, and the whole back of the house, side of the house, and inside was tagged." Without permission, two residents went in and scrubbed it. "We can't tolerate graffiti in a square mile like ours," Thraen says. "You get two of those on a block and that whole block is gone."
Tomahawk Village is so organized in its fight against graffiti that Thraen's husband, Rex, bought a used golf cart and outfitted it for the mission. Instead of golf bags, the rear compartment holds four five-gallon buckets of paint.
Green Valley Ranch in Denver is perhaps the most aggressive in dealing with foreclosed homes.
The rules of its homeowners' association give residents the legal right to go onto someone's property to fix health and safety violations. "We can mow lawns, fix a broken gate, clean up trash," says association president T. J. Stone. And that's exactly what they did when the owners of the foreclosed home on 42nd Avenue dumped their stuff in the street—"lamps, broken tables, everything the owners didn't want to take with them," Stone recalls. The association hired a private company to cart it all away, two truckloads' worth, at a cost of $1,200. It also hired a landscaper to mow the lawn and pick up trash. (The association then placed a lien on the property, giving it the right to recoup the cost once the house is sold.) For homes that need bigger repairs, it gets a court order.
The association has set aside almost $100,000 for things like repainting trim and replacing windows. Stone expects that that amount will cover the rehabilitation of about ten homes. "The money will go fast," he says. But if the spruced-up properties find buyers, the banks or the new owners will repay the costs, the fund will get replenished, and the association can turn to other abandoned properties. "We're hoping to make this program self-sufficient," says Joanne True, a 14-year resident of Green Valley Ranch and secretary of the homeowners' association board. "We want it to grow and grow."
For houses in the worst shape, Green Valley Ranch has secured federal funds. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is spending about $4 billion on the most blight-prone communities around the country. Some $16 million will be used to buy up the worst homes in three Denver neighborhoods, including Green Valley Ranch. Most of those homes will be demolished, and the properties will be landscaped. The lots will be turned over to the city, which will ultimately build new housing.
One likely target of such funds is a house on Perth Street, which has been empty since mid-2008. The windows were broken and vandals got inside and set a fire. The homeowners' association has cleaned up the yard multiple times and hired a contractor to board up the windows and padlock the front door. Yet ironically, because the house is in such bad shape, the bank has refused to officially foreclose on it and take possession. "It's because of all the damage," Stone says. "They don't want the cost of tearing down the building."
That goes to the heart of the issue—no one wants these homes. Not the neighbors, not new buyers, and definitely not the banks. Until the housing market turns around and the number of vacant homes starts to decline, even the most successful community effort will have a hard time making lasting change. Jim Gillespie, president and CEO of real estate giant Coldwell Banker, says volunteer efforts like these can be "somewhat" effective in protecting real estate values. But he argues that the federal government is still too focused on shoring up banks instead of helping bring buyers back into the marketplace. The banks are also to blame. "Banks need to speed up every phase of the process," Gillespie adds. "That lag is a big challenge right now."
In the meantime, communities will keep doing everything they can. Says Ardena Perry in Sparks, Nevada, "A recession will bring out the worst or the best in people. We're just hunkering down and saying, Okay, we'll get through this."
Do More
- Talk to your neighbors and enlist volunteers to keep tabs on nearby homes. An overgrown lawn is usually the first sign that a property has been foreclosed. Report problems like broken or missing windows to the local police or to your town's housing department.
- Collect flyers, junk mail, and loose trash and listen for abandoned pets, a growing problem in vacant homes. But don't turn on the hose, even to water the lawn (broken pipes will cause damage), or plug into an electrical outlet (a potential fire hazard).
- Use your local homeowners' association. If the community rules don't allow trash or lawn cleanup on vacant properties, vote to change the rules. Check guidelines at the Community Associations Institute.
- Establish a neighborhood watch program if you're worried about crime. The National Sheriffs' Association maintains a network of these groups and a website offering tips on starting one.
- Tap into groups that can help, like the National Vacant Properties Campaign, which holds conferences on maintaining empty homes.
- Take preemptive action to educate yourself and your neighbors about how to keep your homes. Check out Hope Now, a partnership between debt counselors and lenders or call 888-995-HOPE).
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