By DAMIAN DOMINGUEZ, The Index-Journal
GREENWOOD, S.C. (AP) — Austin Lathren has seen run-down and dilapidated homes all through the 19 years he’s lived in Greenwood.
Now, as a junior at Lander College and the Metropolis of Greenwood’s administrative intern, he was given the prospect to pave the best way for coping with these blighted properties.
“From Day One since I received right here for my internship, they mentioned that is your activity,” he mentioned.
The job was to take inventory of the properties in metropolis limits deemed unsafe for habitation, in keeping with the Worldwide Property Upkeep Code. After that, metropolis and code enforcement workers would assist him draft a brand new course of that may give the federal government extra chunk when clamping down on code violations.
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“Let’s establish properties which can be truly issues,” Lathren mentioned. “We went ward to ward and actually simply recognized what we noticed as, in keeping with the IPMC, as both unsafe or an imminent hazard. As soon as we recognized these properties, it’s been full-go on how can we get these homes remediated.”
Unsafe constructions are properties that aren’t safely liveable: They don’t have any energy working to them, or have open entry factors. The important thing, Lathren mentioned, is that they current some sort of danger to anybody dwelling on the premises.
A property that presents an “imminent hazard” is prone to collapsing or in any other case failing, structurally. Greenwood Constructing Official James Whittaker mentioned town typically learns about these once they truly fail, equivalent to when the roof collapses or an deserted constructing catches fireplace.
Town has a backlog of about 110 such properties which can be both unsafe or an imminent hazard. The method of coping with these points can drag on for years.
At present, town offers two notices, every with a set grace interval for the property proprietor to reply. After that, an proprietor can board up a property to purchase extra time, and getting a constructing allow can purchase them an extra 12 months. Usually, these steps get taken, however no work will get performed on these buildings.
At most, an proprietor may drag this course of out 850 days earlier than town is lastly in a position to take motion to demolish the constructing or in any other case remediate the problem.
Assistant Metropolis Supervisor Draper Carlile mentioned the IPMC doesn’t present a timeline for this course of.
“It solely requires that you just give an affordable time,” he mentioned. “We had been how lengthy it was taking to get from sending out a notification, sending out one other notification, attempting to get by way of this course of. It’s taking two-and-a-half, three years to get by way of this course of. Too lengthy — or simply under no circumstances.”
So a brand new course of, lately offered to Greenwood Metropolis Council and authorized in first studying, would shorten this timeline. If authorized, town will give only one discover to property house owners, and the timeline will likely be reduce all the way down to a most of 455 days.
It additionally places into regulation a construction for civil penalties and fines for individuals who don’t reply to town’s notices. Whittaker mentioned many of those 110 properties have been sitting on a listing on the metropolis for years, however house owners can’t be readily contacted or don’t reply to communication by town.
Fines will incentivize house owners to sit down down and work with town to create a plan for fixing the property, Wilkie mentioned. A brand new a part of this ordinance is the voluntary remediation settlement, one thing Whittaker delivered to Greenwood from his expertise working in Anderson’s buildings division.
The VRA would permit property house owners to signal an settlement with town that offers them flexibility within the remediation course of however holds them to an agreed-upon timeline to behave on the problems recognized.
“I do know our code enforcement officers have been pissed off the previous years. They file all of the paperwork and the method simply stops,” he mentioned. “I need to work with them if a home is repairable, however putting one brick at a time is just not repairing it in a well timed method.”
“If we’ve got buy-in from the property proprietor and so they need to maintain utilizing it as a rental property, a voluntary treatment settlement is a automobile to permit us to come back to the phrases obligatory that they will get the time to repair up their property,” Carlile mentioned.
Out of the about 110 properties on this backlog, Whittaker mentioned perhaps one in all them is at present legally occupied. However Wilkie mentioned many of those deserted constructions home trespassers who’re utilizing these unsafe constructions as shelter, which implies eliminating these doubtlessly harmful buildings is usually a matter of public security.
When a property is simply too far gone to restore, metropolis officers received’t situation the constructing permits wanted to do this work. In instances when demolition seems to be the one choice, Metropolis Supervisor Julie Wilkie mentioned town typically places a lien on the property when the proprietor isn’t prepared to demolish it themselves.
With the intention to keep away from a lien, town has opened up the potential of donating these blighted properties to Greenwood. If metropolis officers need the property as a possible web site for re-development or neighborhood enrichment, they will settle for the donation and demolish the property the earlier proprietor left on it.
“If town simply sits again and waits for the non-public sector to determine what occurs, then I believe we find yourself with 110 blighted homes,” Wilkie mentioned. “Possibly the residential element of re-development hasn’t been one which we’ve centered on previously, and I believe we’ve got a novel alternative to say let’s do away with some blight, and on the identical time let’s determine if we are able to return in right here with some infill housing and begin to re-develop some neighborhoods and improve property values.”
The federal American Rescue Plan Act has given Greenwood flexibility it didn’t have earlier than to deal with this situation, Wilkie mentioned, and this one-time money infusion can be utilized partially to assist facilitate these long-overdue demolitions.
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