Recently we provided on social media a (growing) list of public sources demonstrating the challenges and inefficiencies of communities that administer vacant/foreclosed/rental property registries internally.

  • “Managing this registry is labor intensive as the list is ever changing- some properties become occupied while new ones vacate.” Instagram
  • “But L&I officials now say the department no longer uses the tool. They said the department mainly relies on residents’ complaints and its list of vacant property licenses – which L&I admits is a massive undercount – to monitor empty buildings.”(link)
  • “A paperwork logjam is preventing the City of Cleveland’s small team of code inspectors focused on lead hazards from doing its main job” (Community recently launched a vacant property registry but are administering it in-house) (link)
  • “The ordinance is intended to make it easier to contact property owners, but that hasn’t always worked out. The challenge is tracking down the owners. Many are out-of-state corporations or trusts. A lot of our time is spent just trying to get in contact,” (link)
  • “Barber said expanding the initiative citywide likely would require adding staff for enforcement” (link)
  • Petrossi has told council there are “many more vacant properties out there than are registered…………code enforcement sends notices out, but if they’re returned undeliverable, at that point that case is closed” (link)
  • “only 16 properties are registered with the city and pay the permit fee regularly…… a true number of vacant properties would be the 69 on the list plus the 53 that should be there, or 122”
    “Many of the city’s vacant properties are owned by out-of-state banks or investment holdings ……this also makes it difficult for the city’s code enforcement officers to find the right person to send violation notices to. (link)
  • “We found that 92% of properties demolished by the city using the in rem proceedings were not registered in the vacant property registry,” (link)
  • For 2016, DBI’s registries reported only 28 vacant commercial buildings and 25 vacant commercial storefronts. Neither DBI nor other City agencies have a comprehensive listing of all commercial storefronts or commercial building and storefront vacancies against which DBI’s registry listings can be compared. However, the information that is available and informal observation of vacant commercial buildings and storefronts in San Francisco indicates that the DBI registries are underreporting such vacancies and that property owner compliance with the ordinances is low. For example, for 2016, DBI did not record any vacant commercial storefronts in the Richmond or central Mission districts at all.  (link)
  • Asked why vacant property legislation hasn’t been enforced, …. said there are “several factors,” including limited staffing and resources in code enforcement, outdated administrative processes and some ambiguities in the existing code that made consistent enforcement “difficult.” (link)

Rental

  • “Limited staffing within SDCI for RRIO contributes to a backlog of lapsed registrations needing enforcement review.”
    Municipal Code… mandates new owners of properties registered with RRIO to update SDCI within 60 days after the property sale closes. However, this update rarely occurs. SDCI instead communicates with the selling property owners, who are no longer responsible for the property.”
    “Adding to these challenges, about 25 percent of RRIO property owners continue to submit paper applications. This creates extra administrative work” (link)
  • “It’s a labor-intensive process that SDCI has now to verify RRIO registration compliance and they have a large backlog of work they have to do on that, and they only have so many staff.” (link)
  • “It’s been very challenging in terms of getting through the registration,” McLaughlin said. “And from our side, it’s been very challenging to meet our cost-recovery goals because we’re not getting the number of registrations that we need.”
    Only 9, only 28% of …..18,423 rental units are fully registered, while 48% have not initiated the registration process, 12% have incomplete registrations and 5% are awaiting staff review. (link)
  • “An analysis of the city’s registry released Thursday by City Auditor Alexander Marion estimates that just 25% of properties that should be on the list actually are.”  (link)