Dilapidated Homes Cause Hassles For City in Kanasas

March 29--Fire Chief Kim Forbes and Assistant Police Chief Troy Hoover told the Hutchinson Housing Commission this week that the city has a major public safety problem with hundreds of dilapidated houses, some vacant and abandoned and others still occupied, often by elderly people.

"I think we're to the point that it's a real problem," Forbes said. "It's not going to go away if we don't start dealing with it. It's a big problem, and it's going to get bigger."

Growing danger documented

Forbes said the dilapidated housing is a firefighting hazard. When roofs have leaked for years, the decking has rotted, interior beams have deteriorated and become as fragile as balsa wood. The water trickles down and causes plaster and Sheetrock to fall away from interior walls and ceilings. Firefighters wearing protective clothing, breathing apparatus and carrying tools can weigh as much as 300 pounds, and they can step right through a rotted porch or interior floor.

Nine times in the last 2.5 years, Forbes said, firefighters have been inside houses battling flames when roofs or floors collapsed.

That's changed how they fight fires, he said.

Also, at one time they could usually count on having 20 minutes inside to knock down a fire in a standard wood frame house with furnishings made of solid wood and natural fibers, Forbes said. But new furnishings are often made of particle board rich with flammable glues and solvents, plastics and foam rubber cushions. Those burn hotter and create more smoke.

Combine them with a deteriorating structure and firefighters can count on only five to 10 minutes before facing a flashover, like a sudden explosion of fire.

Local firefighters have been caught in flashovers. No one has been seriously injured, but firefighters have emerged with helmets that have started to melt and protective coats that have started to burn.

As a consequence, more and more they're fighting defensive fires, pouring water on from outside rather than trying to attack it from the inside, Deputy Chief Mike Miller said.

Invitation for crime

Hoover said police officers have documented 26 cases of crimes occurring in vacant structures since 2010. And that didn't include numerous other calls to vacant houses for incidents that didn't rise to the level of a crime. Sometimes transients break in looking for a place to sleep. And in the winter they'll set fires to keep warm or cook food.

Vacant houses, he said, are frequently used as drug drops or meeting places for selling or using drugs. He showed pictures of several gym bags containing used syringes and trash from manufacturing methamphetamine that were found in one house.

"Vacant houses attract criminal activity," Hoover said.

They also attract kids. Hoover said there have been cases where kids exploring vacant houses have been injured when they stepped on a nail, fell off a stairway with a missing banister or had rotting stairs collapse as they climbed them.

When a house is vacant and unmaintained, he said, it sends a signal that no one cares. And when no one cares, some juveniles think it's OK to break windows, kick in doors and tear it up. He showed pictures of another house where three juveniles were arrested after knocking down a deteriorating out-building and breaking into a house and vandalizing the interior.

"I think the property owner has a responsibility to maintain his property, and at some point the city is going to have to hold him accountable," Hoover said.

Whole neighborhoods

Forbes cited the 100 block of East Avenue F as an example. He said that on one side of the street there are five vacant houses that should be demolished. There are two more around the corner on Walnut.

On the corner of Walnut and Avenue F, one two-story house has been vacant and not maintained for years. It has a covered porch that is collapsing, a crumbling foundation, missing siding, a leaky roof with rotted decking and many broken windows, which would allow a fire to spread faster. Inside, water has caused plaster to fall from the walls.

On Thursday, a demolition contractor hired by the city delivered equipment to the site in preparation for an emergency demolition of the house.

Another house on the block had a back addition that was simply falling off the house, a crumbling foundation and a deteriorating roof. Until recently an elderly man lived inside with 29 cats. He's now in a Veterans Administration hospital, and Forbes said the house is no longer habitable.

Another house on the block has no interior walls and, pushed by strong south winds, is starting to lean because there are no interior supports.

Forbes said they've been in houses with holes in the roof, holes in the ceiling below that and holes in the floor below that. Some of the homes, he said, haven't been maintained for 40 or 50 years.

Forbes said that firefighters responding to medical calls have found five to 10 people living in houses with no electricity, gas or water service.

Miller showed pictures of the interior of one house that had once been divided into several apartments. Over the years, the elderly owners stopped renting out the apartments and continued to live in one small area of the house. The roof leaked so badly that there were dozens of plastic buckets throughout the house to collect dripping water. In one room they tacked big sheets of plastic to the ceiling to collect the water and funnel it into buckets, which they used to empty by hand until they rigged an electric pump to move the water from the buckets through a garden hose and out a window.

Not surprisingly, the house had extensive water damage. Sheetrock and plaster was missing from many of the walls and ceilings, and mold was everywhere.

Lack of complaints

The presentation at Wednesday's Housing Commission grew out of a Housing Commission discussion a month ago about whether to recommend that the City Council adopt a Vacant Property Registration Ordinance. At that time, Commission Member Kevin Bleything questioned whether another ordinance was needed and whether the International Property Maintenance Code already gave the city the authority it needs to get property owners to take care of their property.

When the City Council passed the IPMC in February 2011, it was with the clear direction that enforcement would be based solely upon citizen complaints, rather than city inspectors acting on their own.

On Thursday, Housing Commission Chairman Ron Kelley said that's clearly not working to improve the city's housing. After looking at pictures of one house shown by Forbes and Miller, Kelley said, "The complaint system doesn't work. I've been looking at that house for two or three years."

Forbes said that once a house deteriorates to a certain point, the law allows the city to demolish a house. But one problem is funding for demolitions. The city has about $40,000 budgeted, but that will pay to demolish 5 to 10 unsafe structures a year. But Forbes said there are hundreds of homes and other buildings in the city that need to come down.

"It's not exaggerating to say 700, 750," Forbes said. "It could be 1,000. I think it would be shocking to people if you started taking a count."

Not all are in immediate need of demolition, he said. But the others are in need of immediate attention or they will be within another five years or so, he added.

"From a money standpoint, you have to do it," Forbes said. "But the magnitude of it is such that it will take years to rectify."

Uninhabitable but homes

Many of those buildings are vacant and abandoned. But some are still occupied. That's another problem -- where do the residents go?

"What do we do with grandma and grandpa?" Forbes asked.

Sometimes those people haven't maintained their homes for decades because they are either physically unable or don't have the money, city officials said. In other cases, there are people who have the money and who simply choose not to spend it. In still other cases, there are psychiatric issues and the people simply don't recognize the need to maintain their property.

"The compassionate part of the public, not wanting to put people out (of their homes), is what keeps it going," said Shara Gonzales of New Beginnings, a nonprofit housing agency that provides emergency, transitional and long-term low-income housing.

Ron Fisher of Interfaith Housing Services said that part of the problem is the buildings, but part of the problem is people. Solving the problem will involve a lot more than enforcing city code and tearing down unsafe housing. Fisher said they need to gather a lot of other people around the table from social services and other agencies to address the people problem.

"It's not just (city) code and tearing down," he said. "It's always going to happen because the people factor is always among us."

Gonzales said New Beginnings housing is already full with about 500 people. There are landlords willing to rent houses to New Beginnings clients, she said, but only if they have support available to ensure those clients don't slide back into the same situation they are in now.

She said New Beginnings has staff trained to assess potential clients and see what kind of help they need beyond simply a roof over their heads. However, she said, that staff is "inundated" dealing with those who have no home, let alone taking on hundreds more who are living in substandard or unsafe housing.

Call for solutions

In recent years, she said, New Beginnings and all social service agencies have been struggling with diminished financial support because of government cutbacks.

"If we're going to find a local solution," she said, "I think we're going to have to find local funds."

Kelley, Bleything and several other members of the Housing Commission said they need more data to establish the size of the problem and identify specific homes.

First National Bank President Greg Binns, a member of the commission, said that in a perfect world the Housing Commission could sit down with a report on each house, showing the owner, how long it had been vacant and what the city had done to try to get the owner to repair the house.

"The first step has got to be identifying how many cases we're talking about," Binns said. "Is it 50 or 500? We've got to know how big the problem is."

Bleything said that perhaps enforcement of the property maintenance code should be broadened, from acting only upon citizen complaints to allowing police officers and firefighters to make complaints to the inspection department based on public safety issues they encounter.

In the end, the commission asked Housing Program Manager Irene Hart and city staff to develop a strategy and present it at a future meeting.

Copyright 2013 - The Hutchinson News, Kan.