Councilwoman Carol Schwartz, R-At large, said the problem is lack of enforcement of existing laws.

"The council already has like a "clean or lien" kind of legislation," she said. "One of the problems in being a council member has been that you can pass the most perfect laws in the world that you hope will take care of these kinds of problems, but if no one’s implementing them, then it is very frustrating. There are some legal ways that you can rectify some of these problems and it just never is done.

"The D.C. government has been one of the biggest problems itself," Schwartz said. She noted that as a school board member in the 1970s she reluctantly voted to close some public schools in the District in the hope that the government would sell them and make some money.

"Here we are, 20 years later, and those buildings sit abandoned," she said. "I think we’ve got to do an inventory of the D.C. government’s stock of abandoned buildings and we’ve got to get these buildings back on the market."

She said during a real estate slump she would favor selling these properties for very little money.

"But we’ve got a decent real estate market going." Schwartz said. She also noted that the D.C. government pays rent on many of the offices it occupies.

"I would look to see where we have property which may be valuable, and either use it for D.C. government space, or if we don’t need it, don’t want it for whatever reason, then I would look at selling these properties, preferably for a use that will benefit the city."

Councilman Harold Brazil, D-At large, said he favors boosting penalties against owners of abandoned properties.

"We should enforce the class five (tax) classification. It’s out there for abandoned and vacant property," Brazil said. "It’s very stiff, $5 per hundred dollars (of assessed value). So we need to make it not economical to leave your property in poor condition or abandoned.

"We have changed our notification requirements to take property away from the owners for failure to pay tax," he said. "I would shorten it even further, consistent with due process, so that we can get hold of these properties quickly and either sell them as tax asset no sales or to get them and to resell to individuals.

"I think those are two of the biggest things you can do (to alleviate the problem)," Brazil said.

"You can also do it through the nuisance law. If the liens (on the property) are too high, we can come in and fix them," he said. "We can do that with private contractors. We could use some of the prison folks to do that so we can do it fairly cheaply."

Brazil said he also supports some sort of homesteading program.

"I like the idea of taking the boards off the housing," he said. "We have a $5,000 homebuyer tax deduction. Washington seems to be coming back in many ways, certainly in the real estate area. Let’s set some qualifications — so you’ve got maybe middle income to working class on down — and sell some of that stuff for a dollar a property with requirements for fix-up. I think that works."

Brazil said he would want D.C. government workers and people moving out of public housing to have some priority in the program.

Restaurant owner and businessman Jeffrey Gildenhorn said the government should aggressively redevelop vacant properties.

"I’d like to see the government get in touch with the owners of the property, and I’m sure the owner of the property would be more than happy to sell that property to the government," Gildenhorn said, "because it doesn’t do them any good to hold onto it if they can’t build on it and lease the property. So it’s really costing them because they’re paying real estate taxes on the property and it’s not generating any income.

"Then I’d like to see the government raze the properties. Number one, you accomplish getting rid of blights on the neighborhood," he said.

"Step two, I’d like to see them resell the property back to private developers at bargain prices, with the condition that they develop the property," he said. "They cannot flip the property to any other developer to make a profit. They’ve got to develop it within a certain amount of time; otherwise it goes back to the government.

"I think once you start a redevelopment program, you have the potential for retailers to move into the commercial sites and the potential for people to move back into the city and to become homeowners," he said.

Councilman Jack Evans, D-Ward 2, said there are no easy solutions to the problem.

"One vacant house on a block can be a very destabilizing element. It becomes a crack house, a haven for prostitutes, a whole bunch of things," Evans said. "How do we deal with it? Like many things in the world, vacant housing isn’t a monolithic concept.

"The first thing you have to do is find out who owns the vacant housing. And not surprisingly, the largest owner of vacant housing in the District of Columbia is the District government. Second largest owners are the churches; the third largest owners are absentee landlords. And the fourth category are people who live in the city who happen to own them," he said.

"What I want to do as mayor is to put back in place something like the homestead program that we once had. We will sell anyone a house for a dollar, give them a low-interest loan, and they have to fix it up and live in the house for five years. And then it’s theirs to do with it what they want.

"I believe we can move a lot of the housing out of the inventory of the District government," Evans said. "A lot of intense preparation goes into a program like that, but the benefits are enormous.

"Churches," he said, "are a more difficult problem. They’re sitting on a lot of this stuff, and I think the District government is going to have to work in partnership with the churches to get these houses fixed up. You’re almost in a public-private partnership.

"The third category is a more difficult one," Evans said, "The people who don’t live in the city, the speculators as I call them. Frankly you just can’t pass a law that says ‘I can seize your property.’ This is America; that’s just the way it is.

"We can certainly do ‘clean it or lien it’ type things where you go in and fix it up and charge the owners," he said. "It gets costly, that program does, it’s difficult to implement, but certainly I think that we can push it to the extent of the law of making an absentee owner at least maintain the property in a fashion that is not a blight on the neighborhood."

Former chief financial officer Anthony Williams, also a Democrat, said many properties could be used as part of a housing redevelopment effort.

"One of the first things I’d do (as mayor) is work with the control board to see that we have top-rank project managers for the different neighborhoods and begin working with the neighborhoods on neighborhood strategies," Williams said. "As part of that strategy, I believe that we can commit much more than we have to housing development."

Williams said he’d be willing to spend an additional $100 million on housing development.

"We can take that money on the basis of these neighborhood strategies — under the guidance of good project managers — and begin reclaiming, rehabilitating these abandoned properties as part of block-by-block redevelopment efforts," he said.

"One of the things that I did as CFO was begin an asset management strategy," Williams said. "This asset management strategy has involved a complete inventory of the city’s assets.

"You decide which of these assets are you going to sell, which of these assets are you going to keep as part of an economic development program," he said.

"It’s taken the city time to get that asset management thing completely done and it’s taken time to get the economic development people in place to start using those resources the city has decided it won’t sell," he said.

"I fundamentally disagree that your first order of business should be just to sell to the highest bidder," he said. "Because if you just sell to the highest bidder, you’re not going to get intelligent reuse of these properties."

D.C. Statehood candidate John Gloster said vacant properties should be used for projects that benefit neighborhoods.

Owners of vacant properties "should be aggressively fined," Gloster said. "And if nothing is done after a period of a year, then they should be confiscated from the owners and put to use as homeless shelters, women’s shelters or suitable recreational centers or treatment centers. Something that would be positive for the neighborhood.

"It’s not just that they’re taking away tax dollars," he said. "Because a lot of them are absentee landlords who are not paying taxes any longer.

"A lot more importantly, it drives down the entire neighborhood. Those things tend to be broken into and used as crack houses. Even if they’re just eyesores, they discourage people from investing in their own communities," Gloster said.

"These aren’t new ideas; they just have not been implemented," he said. "And I think that we can go a long way into easing the low-income housing pressures that there are on the District by doing some of that and inviting nonprofits like Manna to come in and take possession of some of these abandoned buildings and houses."

Councilman Kevin P. Chavous, D-Ward 7, said the District government hasn’t been nearly effective enough in putting vacant properties in the hands of owners who will rehabilitate them.

"I have legislation introduced now where if citizens can show that they can get financing to rehab (a building), the city would forgive the liens and give it to those citizens for a dollar or less," Chavous said.

"But in order for it to work here, we need to have a much more aggressive approach from (the office of) tax and revenue to put the liens on the properties, enforce the liens and put them up for tax sale.

"That whole process is taking far more time than it should have," he said. "We have to come up with creative ways to send the message to the speculators and the people sitting on these properties that we’re not going to let that happen.

"After X period of time, the liens will attach and then they’ll go up for tax sale foreclosure and these other special creative ways of turning the property over will take place," he said.

"The city has to have a more aggressive real property inventory (of the properties it owns)," Chavous said. "The CFO’s office is responsible for all this property and they haven’t moved that property at all. I will appoint people who will use that as a major focus so that we can turn over this abandoned property and have creative ways to use that property in the neighborhoods."

Democrat Sylvia Robin-son-Green, a schoolteacher and resident of Congress Heights, said vacant housing should be turned over to those who need it most.

"It’s abandoned," she said, "but it belongs to someone. I would increase the fines on them if they don’t clean them up or make them livable.

"What would be beneficial for the owners of the property and for residents that don’t have places to live, is give them programs where if you’re homeless you can move into this vacant building. I would give you so many months or years to get it livable and I would give you so much money to make it livable," Robinson-Green said. "I don’t like that property sitting vacant like that."

She noted that many of the abandoned houses in her Ward 8 neighborhood are beyond repair.

"If those houses are really in bad shape," she said, "I would want them torn down, and the property cleaned up. They’re infested with rats, roaches and a whole bunch of things. And they’re hiding places for junkies and little children that want to be hiding out from their parents doing things that they know they’re not supposed to get caught doing."

Copyright 1998, The Common Denominator