A lot to unpack in a featured article from the Clarion Ledger (MS) titled “State-owned tax forfeited properties are not cleaned up by the state. Who does it then?”
Key Facts from the article:
- 7,000 state-owned tax forfeited properties scattered throughout Mississippi
- Just over 1,800 of which are located in the City of Jackson
- Tax-Forfeited lands are held by the Public Lands Division, which is within Mississippi’s Secretary of State’s office and currently has two employees.
- The Secretary of State’s office “has no statutory authority, nor budgetary authority to clean up any property,” (“In other words, they can’t maintain properties, and even if they could they don’t have the money for it”.)
- State code provides for the reimbursement to municipalities for “maintaining unredeemed lands”. However that fund has not been funded since 2016
- Jackson currently has 3 code enforcement officials, with 2 being onboarded (15-20 in 2015).
While the challenges are clearly evident, the article provides several positives.
- These issues are a primary focus of the Select Committee on Capital and Metro Revitalization, made up of 19 members from the Mississippi House of Representatives
- Jackson is taking independent action through a new “Abandoned Property Task Force”, with encouragement for State leaders to join.
- For individual properties, collaboration exists between the Jackson code enforcement department and the state
To view the article in its entirety, please click here.
To view a related article from earlier this month, please click on the following link:
City of Jackson has nearly a quarter of Mississippi’s abandoned properties