An abandoned house at 2922 Washtenaw Avenue was demolished on March 24. It had sold for $470,000 only three years earlier.
José Moré/Chicago News Cooperative
The 2900 block of Washtenaw Avenue is a quiet street in the Avondale neighborhood, where women stroll with baby carriages and parents watch their children play on the seesaw in Algonquin Park, a small playground.
So when David Martin, a burly workman from the Delta Demolition Company, piloted his bright orange excavator down the alley, neighbors were surprised to see the creaking Hitachi EX160 take aim at the vacant two-story frame house at 2922 Washtenaw that a court had deemed “dangerous, hazardous and unsafe.”
Only three years before, the house had sold for $470,000. But in just over an hour, Mr. Martin reduced it to a compact pile of rubble to be hauled away.
“You guys better get out of the way,” Mr. Martin said to observers, maneuvering the business end of his Hitachi high over the yard. Pulling the levers of the machine, he plunged the steel-jawed grapple into the side of the house, shrouding the place in a cloud of splinters, plaster and dust.
Next door, a neighbor peering through his window rendered his verdict on the spectacle: thumbs up.
In many respects, vacant buildings like the one on Washtenaw Avenue have long been fixtures of the urban landscape. But the current collapse of the nation’s housing industry has made abandoned housing a far more pervasive problem in Chicago and other cities.
Officially, the City of Chicago identifies 5,800 structures on its registry of vacant buildings, a listing where banks and property owners can avoid fines by registering vacant houses and committing to routine maintenance.
But Richard Monocchio, Chicago’s building commissioner, estimates the number of vacant buildings to be far higher, 12,000, because, he says, investors and owners simply do not register abandoned properties.
Overwhelmed city officials, trying to trace the parties responsible for the dwellings, are facing a challenge unique to this crisis: Complex financial schemes hatched by predatory lenders eager to make home loans have made it tough to trace ownership of abandoned buildings.
Indeed, a growing number of abandoned houses sit for months or more, becoming neighborhood eyesores that evolve into sinister safe houses — hide-outs used by squatters, gangs and criminals to stash drugs, plot crimes and evade the police. The garbage inside attracts rodents, and the boarded windows symbolize neglect, which has a devastating impact on nearby property values.
“Some of these people lose their jobs and just walk away,” said Willie Germino, an appraiser at ShoreBank on the South Side. “Someone just closes the curtains and blinds and locks the doors, hoping that no one will notice it’s vacant.”
“See that one?” Mr. Germino asked on a drive through one of the worst-hit neighborhoods. “There’s no boarded-up windows, but it’s been vacant for months.”
Although the problem is citywide, it is particularly evident in poor neighborhoods. In the 24th Ward on the West Side, Alderman Sharon Dixon said that there were 1,256 foreclosed properties and that many had been abandoned.
“The city has been pretty good helping get these places boarded up,” Ms. Dixon said, “but people still get in, and the result is bad, particularly for public safety and our young people.”
In some areas of the Chicago Lawn and West Englewood neighborhoods on the South Side, boarded-up buildings seem as common as storm doors. On a recent tour of the 6200-6400 blocks of Rockwell Street, the number of boarded-up houses equaled the total of occupied units.
“This is a very challenging situation,” said Mr. Monocchio, who called open buildings that have been abandoned “attractive nuisances.” When squatters, gang members and criminals see curtains flapping, he said, they know the building is vacant, and the houses become magnets for criminals and looters.
One neighbor of a boarded-up house on South Lawndale said thieves had ransacked the abandoned house, carting off water heaters, copper pipes and wiring.
“The longer the building sits, the more the structure deteriorates,” Mr. Monocchio said.
An ordinance passed in April 2008 gave housing inspectors new tools to crack down on property owners and to demolish neglected structures, he said.
“We are picking up the pace of demolitions,” Mr. Monocchio said. “In the last two years, we did more than 500. I see that number rising. It is important to point out that we are trying to put the burden back on where it belongs. We are also going to go after owners, bankers or investors for recovery.”
Mr. Monocchio said the number of vacant houses was far above the number in 2003 when investors snapped up vacant properties to build houses that could be sold and mortgaged. When the housing bubble started to burst in 2007, though, foreclosures and defaults exposed the reckless banking industry lending policies that are complicating Mr. Monocchio’s efforts to track down owners.
Bankers made mortgage loans to less-than-credit-worthy borrowers on easy terms, then sold the loans to other investors, who would sell them to still others. Sometimes the mortgages were pooled and sold to foreign and domestic investors as securities much like corporate stocks.
“What you have is the majority of these buildings are owned by investors or banks or the lien is held by banks on properties that have been abandoned,” Mr. Monocchio said. “It is like a chess game. We have to go through the title-search process and give them notice.”
Even when the situation is as simple as at 2922 Washtenaw, the demolition process can be challenging and lengthy.
City officials sought the order of demolition against a firm whose agent was listed as Imad Shehade, a real estate investor, and Wheeler-Dealer Ltd., Equity-One Investment Fund L.L.C., unknown owners and ShoreBank, which held a mortgage on the property.
Mr. Shehade did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Jacques Blaauw, who lives just behind 2922 Washtenaw, said the investors bought the house and large lot in March 2007, intending to knock it down and replace it with a multifamily building.
“He needed a zoning variance,” Mr. Blaauw said, “and we opposed him.”
Mr. Blaauw said he and his neighbors lodged complaints with their alderman at the time, Manuel Flores, arguing that plans for development would be bad for the neighborhood. Eventually, the neighbors prevailed.
According to the demolition order and interviews with neighbors, the house remained vacant and soon began experiencing the same problems as abandoned homes elsewhere. Vagrants moved in, and suspicious-looking cars stopped at the house, tell-tale signs of gangs and drugs.
Mr. Blaauw said Mr. Flores helped get the building boarded up, but the garbage inside attracted the usual suspects.
“There’s an ex-tenant,” said a neighbor, Ever Velazquez, pointing at a flattened rat in an otherwise clean street.
City records show that the investors bought the house with relatively little cash. The records said the purchase price of $470,000 was covered by a $444,500 mortgage by ShoreBank, requiring the investors to provide a down payment of only $25,500, or about 5 percent.
By the time the city filed for demolition, the house was “beyond reasonable repair,” records said. Some real estate taxes from 2006 remain unpaid, and the city has demanded $56,538 recovery for expenses and litigation costs.
That means the investors would have to pay more than twice their original equity stake in the building simply to get title so the land could be resold.
Unlike many larger banks that engaged in predatory lending, ShoreBank retained the mortgage on the property. But because the bank has so many similar problem loans in its portfolio, state and federal banking regulators have ordered it to take corrective steps that will limit its flexibility in dealing with loans like the one on 2922 Washtenaw.
Even though the title search was relatively simple, it still took years to get a demolition order.
“There goes a lot of history,” said Salvadore Gamboa, a neighbor. “A lot of people don’t realize it, but when you take down a house, you take a lot of things with it.”
How does a veteran Chicago newsman not use the N (or S or E or W) designation in a street address?
He named the nieghborhoods. It’s not rocket science.
Finally some quality and relevant reporting on this site. I’ve been waiting and suffering with too many of Jim Warren’s missive on the futility of hoping for anything against “The Chicago Way” (a theme that I and most people I know are very tired of). I live near Avondale, and I see many abandoned buildings that are going to be trouble– soon. I’d like a bit more info on what the City plans to do about it. While I understand they need to find out who exactly owns the title to such properties, I think more needs to be done so that dangerous buildings can be demolished quickly. Clearly the “owners” of these properties have given up, so why isn’t more done to expedite the process?
Eugene, For those who know the neighborhood names, that might be fine, but the job of a newsman (and his product) is to inform, not to make the reader guess. A simple directional clue would not be inconvenient for the writer to supply to the reader, who, incidentally, may not be as well-versed as you in the names of various Chicago neighborhoods.
My suggestion is for the reader to learn the names of Chicago neighborhoods on their own! Chicago residetns should know these things. Good day!
Now, to address the subject at hand. I am at a loss to understand why more hurriedly demolishing these properties is such a great thing. Vacant lots are not desirable. — CATCHING these properties early on, before they become a detriment to the community, restoring them to viability and preserving the cohesiveness (architecturally and socially) of a neighborhood, is far more beneficial to everyone. — Put the responsibility on the local alderman and the City, once the neighbors have informed the City of the problem. It takes MINUTES to determine the titleholder of most properties, and a few days in all but the most extreme cases. If the owner of a vacant property cannot maintain it, the City has any number of avenues available to either secure it, maintain it, obtain ownership of it, or pressure the local or State governing bodies to enact laws ensuring these processes are expedited. — If I lived next door to an abandoned building, I’d prefer to see it returned to use and returned to the tax rolls than being flattened, only to ultimately draw abandoned vehicles and debris. And, if ‘lucky’, we’ll find some new, totally out-of-context box built next to our properties. — Seriously, the excitement of watching one hours’ worth of demo isn’t worth it. I’d prefer to see an article about some effective and time-sensitive alternatives to flattening these buildings.
If you lived next door to an abandoned building, you’d want it torn down. How can the city maintain it? THEM? There’s far too many and no one to be on site to attend to security matters. When you call the cops to report illegal activity in an abandoned building next store, no charges can be filed. You have to be the owner of the property to press charges. I guess it may work if you live in a super good neighborhood where crime is a stranger.
Please remember that Tionda and Diamond Bradley are still missing. Please make sure you check out abandoned properties before demolishing them.