Report: Abandoned Homes Cost Ohio $64 Million

Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Topics: Economy, Other
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Abandoned houses and vacant lots have cost the state of Ohio nearly $64M million dollars in upkeep and property tax losses. And over half of that expenditure and tax loss comes from Cleveland. That's according to a new report out today that's calling for governments and lenders to do more about the vacant homes, before problems get worse. ideastream's®: Mhari Saito reports.

Community Research Partners estimates that in 2006 about 12 thousand vacant properties cost the city of Cleveland $35 million dollars - $4.4 million to take care of the properties and $31 million in delinquent or lost taxes. And that figure doesn’t even include police and fire runs to empty homes and any enforcement by building code inspectors. Community Research Partners’ Roberta Garber says vacant homes are draining city coffers across the state.

Roberta Garber - The combination of tax losses and the cost of city services is taking away resources to address vacancy as well as to just provide city services. So it just has a spiraling effect.

Garber’s team also looked at three Cleveland neighborhoods to see what vacant properties do to home prices. Results in Slavic Village and Mt Pleasant weren’t conclusive, but in parts of Detroit-Shoreway the median price for houses on blocks with several vacant homes was 16 to 17 thousand dollars less than houses with no empty homes nearby.

Roberta Garber - What we don’t know is if that’s just reflective of the underlying property values, so that could’ve been one of the factors there.

With still more foreclosures on the horizon, Mary Helen Petrus of the Cleveland Neighborhood Redevelopment Coalition, says without action, problems caused by the abandoned homes will get worse.

Mary Helen Petrus - It really does impact tax revenues and the ability of communities to attract people to live there.

And, of course, Petrus points out, property tax declines mean less money for public schools. Mhari Saito, 90.3.

Additional Information

Find the report "$60 Million Dollars and Counting: The cost of vacant and abandoned properties to 8 cities" here.

More In This Series...

This feature is part of the series Mortgage Meltdown.