The city of Fresno must do a
better job of getting property owners to fix up blighted homes, the Fresno
County grand jury said Tuesday.
To that end, the grand jury
said the city must ramp up its data collection and approve more funds for code
enforcement.
The grand jurors also said that
the city failed several times to provide them with documents disclosing how
much has been spent to combat blight, and how much of that money has been
recovered through fines. This budget impact is expected to be in the millions of
dollars, as the Fresno Fire Department estimated the costs of fighting fires at
such properties to be between $200,000 and $500,000 in 2014.
Mayor Ashley Swearengin and the
City Council formed a task force in 2014 to deal with blighted homes, but that
unit has done little more than discuss the importance of the issue in almost a
year of meetings, the report indicates. A complete and accurate database of
blighted homes and code enforcement citations would help both elected officials
and the public understand the true scope of the problem. Fresno’s Development
and Resource Management Division, which oversees code enforcement, will also
need more staffing and transparency to show the public it is working on
effectively ending blight.
City spokesman Mark Standriff
said many of the problems listed in the report are being corrected.
Under a new blight-focused
ordinance passed in May, the hiring process for new code enforcers has begun.
The city has also started to survey the number of out-of-code homes in Fresno.
The report came after
a year-long investigation looking into the issue of substandard housing, what
local advocacy groups are saying about it and what the city is doing to fix it.
The investigation included interviews, document review and an examination of
several neighborhoods by grand jurors.
The grand jury defined blight
as residential structures that may have boarded-up doors and windows, unmowed
lawns, debris piling up in the yard, poor plumbing or several other indicators
of dilapidation. Such houses and apartments drive down surrounding property
values. They also contribute to crime and fire hazards, which increase city
expenditures on law enforcement and firefighting.
Most of these homes, the jury
found, are located south of Highway 180.
Grand jurors commended local
advocacy groups like No More Slumlords and Faith in Community for their work in
bringing the issue to light. They praised the city for passing the “Restore
Fresno” ordinance, which requires homeowners to clean up their property and
register vacant homes. They also commended Swearengin for forming the task
force, which consists of various elected officials and community members.
The ordinance also outlined
city plans to hire more enforcers and conduct a city-wide scan for blighted
homes, but the grand jury said no progress in these efforts was shared with
them.
Money, however, was at the
heart of the recommendations.
In 2011, the city employed 60
code enforcers. But the recession caused that staffing to shrink. Now, only 25
code enforcement officers are expected to investigate 8,000 to 11,000
complaints, which include blighted homes, per year. Fresno needs to ramp up
staffing to be able to enforce the solid standards set by the recent ordinance
and discussed by the task force.
The grand jury said the city is
currently looking into reports of improprieties by enforcers, but no findings
were available by the report’s completion date. Jurors suggested that code
enforcement supervisors monitor their staff more closely to insure the proper
collection of fines and use of resources.
The city also needs to
establish a database of blighted homes and their enforcement status, the report
says. This would allow them to focus on the many Fresno neighborhoods, such as
Lowell, Kirk and Jefferson, in which blight is a major problem. It would also
allow officials to provide quick and accurate information on fines levied
against offenders, which jurors said was not possible during their reporting.
Fresno State’s sociology
department is currently working on cataloging blighted homes into a database,
but it’s behind schedule, the grand jury said.
Janine Nkosi, a professor
supervising the data collection at Fresno State and a member of the city’s
anti-blight task force, said the location of blighted homes and their code
violations has been collected. The team is now working on creating an
interactive map with pictures and addresses so that the public can better
access it. There was no timetable for its completion.
“We also put in a bunch of
public information requests for documents to the city,” she said. “We have yet
to hear anything back.”
Nkosi said all of her data was
collected by several hundred students surveying Fresno over the last year. So
far, more than 1,000 reported blighted homes have been investigated, resulting
in around 450 violations cataloged.
She added that the city has yet
to share their progress on taking the steps outlined in the “Restore Fresno”
ordinance.
The grand jury concluded its
report by saying it was not provided with any information indicating that the
city was moving against repeat offenders — those development companies and
people who own multiple blighted properties. A re-evaluation of the fee
structure and fee collection could also curb this, the jurors said.
July 21, 2015
The
Fresno Bee
By
Rory Appleton
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