ECON Families lose homes after Florida cities turbocharge code enforcement foreclosures

Kathy in FL

Administrator
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First, if this article leaned any harder left the writer's ear would have road rash. Next, I hate Code Enforcement nazis but they do serve a legitimate purpose if applied correctly. Third, everyone and their mother says, "but I didn't know" and all of the other yada yada whining. There may be a few misapplied in the 700+ they are talking about statewide but I can guarantee that the vast majority of them are legitimate and the people had years to clean things up. In Florida there are also a lot of programs to help low-income homeowners if they run up against code enforcement and free legal assistance from Legal Aid. We also have enough activists judges that they could have gotten holds put on the foreclosures if they'd even tried a little. The main story is mostly about a house that didn't go through probate correctly rather than solely about the code enforcement issue. So ... read this article with a grain of salt, but also remember such things are out there and happening so be careful and keep your property up to code, your property taxes paid, etc.

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Families lose homes after Florida cities turbocharge code enforcement foreclosures​


Jessica Shroyer will become homeless tomorrow if the city of Fort Pierce sells her home as planned.

The gray clapboard home is more than 100 years old and shows its age, with missing shingles on the roof and sections of stripped siding. But it’s been in her family, and paid off, for decades. Shroyer, who’s 42, has primarily lived in the house since her father died in 2017.

She’s at risk of losing the house because the city of Fort Pierce, like a number of cities across Florida, has begun to aggressively foreclose on homes in the city for violations ranging from unmowed lawns to unsafe structures.

The foreclosures have brought in millions for the cities, but have taken away homes that have been in families for generations, particularly in heavily Black and lower income neighborhoods. And the lawyer who has aggressively pursued the practice is trying to make cities in South Florida next.

“It’s my life,” Shroyer said of her Fort Pierce home. “If they take this property, they are ripping my life away.”

Last May, the city filed a lawsuit to foreclose on the house over unpaid property fines going back all the way to 2004. The city said the amount due from the fines, some of which increase by $100 a day, is more than $240,000.

That came as news to Shroyer, who had no idea the house had unpaid fines. She said her father, Gene, had always done his own maintenance on the house.

She and her sisters, Kathleene Heminger Shroyer and Geri Shroyer, are desperate to find a solution to keep the house, which each of them has called home at some point.

In late 2021, the city signed a contract with an outside attorney named Matt Weidner to file lawsuits against the owners of these properties.

Weidner is trying to get several South Florida cities, including Davie and Boca Raton, to join in, calling homes subject to foreclosure because of aggressive enforcement of code violations a potential goldmine of untapped revenue.

Weidner first attracted national attention for his work helping homeowners keep their properties in the wake of the Great Recession. Now he helps cities take people’s homes away.

Fort Pierce is the ninth jurisdiction in Florida that hired Weidner to file these kinds of cases.

Weidner has criss-crossed the state speaking at and sponsoring conferences targeting local officials and has made direct pitches to cities all over the state, city records obtained by the Miami Herald show.

Cities don’t have to pay anything up front. Instead, they give him a cut of whatever he recovers.

The Herald investigation found that Weidner has turbocharged the number of foreclosure lawsuits filed by many of the cities that have inked deals with him. Fort Pierce had filed one such lawsuit in the five years before hiring Weidner in late 2021. Last year, the city filed 57.

The city of Miami — with a population nine times that of Fort Pierce, 127 miles to the north — has filed fewer than 50 of these lawsuits in the past decade. In Miami, unlike in Fort Pierce, the city’s own attorneys handle the cases — though Miami’s code enforcement practices have themselves recently come under fire for concerns over alleged preferential treatment given to the husband of the city attorney.

Weidner isn’t the only private attorney in Florida who has filed these kinds of lawsuits on behalf of cities, but he appears to be among the most prolific.

The Herald spent more than six months analyzing roughly 775 lawsuits that Weidner filed on behalf of nine cities and counties over the past eight years. The Herald reviewed thousands of pages of legal documents, filed more than two dozen record requests and spoke with numerous property owners who have been the target of these lawsuits as well as lawyers who have defended against them.

While the lawsuits have undoubtedly targeted some properties that deserved to be foreclosed upon, the Herald’s investigation shows that Weidner’s work on behalf of these cities has also had collateral damage.

According to court documents and interviews, numerous property owners complained that they hadn’t been properly notified of the lawsuits and hadn’t been given adequate time to mount their defense.

More than 70% of the property owners named in these suits didn’t have an attorney defending them, according to the Herald’s analysis of court records. Several told the Herald they couldn’t afford one.

The lawsuits have been filed predominantly in heavily Black neighborhoods, which property owners see as part of a mission to gentrify and redevelop their neighborhoods by pushing them out.

Legal experts said that the nature of Weidner’s financial arrangement raises serious concerns that profit motive could dictate which cases — and how many — the cities pursue.

“I think it’s unconscionable that the cities and the counties are participating in this,” said Danaya Wright, a law professor at the University of Florida who also sits on her local code enforcement board.

Weidner first began doing this kind of work in his native St. Petersburg in 2015 and has filed more than 425 lawsuits on behalf of the city since then.

Overall, just under half of the lawsuits he has filed throughout Florida since 2015 have resulted in foreclosures, with the homes being sold at auction to a new owner.

While the amount recovered in each of the cases is typically modest — the houses have fetched an average of $26,000 when they’ve gone to auction — the fees have added up.

In total, Weidner’s firm has been paid nearly $3 million in fees and expenses, say documents obtained by the Herald via records requests filed with each of the jurisdictions that hired his firm.

Weidner spoke with the Herald during the reporting process, but didn’t respond to a set of detailed questions sent by the Herald ahead of publication.

Weidner told the Herald that from his perspective, the problem isn’t that he’s filing too many cases — the problem is that other cities aren’t filing enough.

“My crusade here is the fact that there are billions of dollars that’s owed to the taxpayers of these municipalities that’s not being collected,” Weidner said. “The fact that Miami and all these places are not collecting this is one of the greatest examples of government mismanagement.”

The lawsuits Weidner has filed have been brought against properties that racked up fines from violations of city and county codes — a series of rules designed to ensure that properties do not fall into disrepair, pose a safety hazard or diminish the value of nearby homes.

While the code enforcement fines at the Shroyer home and many other properties result from serious structural problems, several of the foreclosure lawsuits reviewed by the Herald were triggered by violations as minor as an overgrown lawn.

“They would send me a letter and say, ‘Hey, you need to mow your lawn,’ And I would do it,” said Ryan Newberry, who owned a property in Bradenton that was the target of a lawsuit brought by Weidner on behalf of the city in May 2021. Newberry had already torn down the house on his property after the city had deemed it unsafe years earlier. Then the city said he owed $75,000 — the maximum fine permitted by Bradenton’s ordinances — and Newberry reluctantly decided to sign the property over to Bradenton to settle the suit four months after it was filed.

“In my opinion, it’s very corrupt,” he said.

Bradenton’s city administrator, Rob Perry, said the city tries to reach settlements with owners, rather than foreclosing, but acknowledged that sometimes the only option they can reach is for property owners to turn over their properties to the city.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do with them, to be honest,” Perry said.

Title nightmare​

On a recent morning, Wade Clark stood in front of the shell of what used to be his home in Clearwater.

The roof caved in and was removed a few years ago. The home’s only inhabitants now are the small green lizards that dart up and down its gray concrete walls.

Clark’s father had originally built the house in the 1920s for Clark’s grandmother and even in its reduced state, there are hints of its past: Two faded red lions hug the letter C, for Clark, atop the wrought-iron gate in front of the house. Clark, 78, points with pride to the front step, with brilliant inlaid stone, that he built himself.

“Back in the day, it was a good neighborhood,” he said. “People were very close knit.”

The house is a short walk away from the old spring training home of the Philadelphia Phillies, and Clark recalled that as a child he and his friends had earned pocket money retrieving and selling home run balls that had soared over the ballpark’s fence.

Clark’s grandmother lived in the house for decades, followed by his uncle. After his uncle’s death, Clark, a veteran and onetime Clearwater police officer, moved in. In 2011, his two living siblings transferred any claim they had on the house to Clark.

It was Clark’s home when he was fighting cancer that started in his colon, spread to his kidney, and wound up costing him chunks of both. At one point a doctor told him he would have months left to live.

During that time, the house — already in need of work — fell into further disrepair. Clearwater filed code liens on the house in 2017 and 2019, citing a number of issues ranging from an overgrown lawn to problems with the home’s roof, exterior and sidewalk.

Clark recovered from his cancer and was committed to fixing up the house.

But there was a problem.

He wasn’t considered the legal owner. The house had passed from one generation to the next without clearing a legal process called probate, which resolves ownership of properties in the absence of a will.

This situation is common, particularly in lower-income communities, said Wright, the University of Florida professor, who has done extensive research on property and estate law.

Wright said that not being the undisputed owner of a property title can have a cascading effect that makes maintaining a home more difficult.

“After four or five years, it becomes a nightmare,” she said. “They can’t get a building permit if they can’t prove title. They can’t get a mortgage if they can’t prove title.”

Clark’s aunt also had a claim to the property, so even though Clark had been living there for years, he filed suit on Nov. 29, 2019, to have a judge declare him the true owner.

He hoped that when the house was legally in his name, he would qualify for a Veterans Administration loan to fix it up.

As his case was winding its way through the Pinellas County court system, Weidner filed a lawsuit on behalf of the city of Clearwater on April 1, 2020, to foreclose on the property. The city would ultimately say that Clark owed more than $550,000.

If the house had been legally established as Clark’s primary residence, the city would have been barred from filing suit against him, but since his ownership rights were still in flux, he fell into a gray area where the suit was allowed.

Clark, “completely broke,” was able to find a lawyer to help him in his case to win ownership of the house, but wasn’t able to get a lawyer to help him defend the foreclosure suit.

Clark filed a handwritten response soon after he was notified of the foreclosure lawsuit, laying out his fight with cancer and his history as a veteran and police officer. He asked the court to grant him 12 months to make repairs on the house to bring it into compliance.

Then on Sept. 14, 2020, Clark won his other case and was declared the owner of the house.

Clark’s handwritten appeal and his victory giving him ownership of the house didn’t make a difference.

On Oct. 7, 2020, a judge ruled to foreclose on the property. It was sold the following month, nearly one year after Clark filed his suit to claim ownership.

Stolen inheritance​

Clark sees the foreclosure push by cities like Clearwater and St. Petersburg as part of a broader effort to redevelop historically Black neighborhoods and push out Black residents.

“That was the attitude, gentrification across America,” he said. “I was not the only person in this town that this happened to.”

The city of Clearwater bristled at suggestions of racial bias in its code enforcement lawsuits.

“That allegation is offensive and demonstrably untrue,” said Joelle Castelli, the city’s communications director. “These cases are initiated by neighbor complaints.”

But in both Clearwater and St. Petersburg, the areas where Weidner has filed the most foreclosure lawsuits are also the areas with the highest share of Black residents, the Herald’s analysis found.

Former St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman, whose administration introduced the foreclosure program, had no explanation for why the preponderance of foreclosures were in heavily Black areas.

“I don’t know why that would be,” he said. “But there certainly wasn’t any target.”

The loss of homes that would be passed down from one generation of Black families to the next is significant, because the share of Black families that inherit wealth is half the share of white families that do, according to research by economists at the Federal Reserve Board.

And the average inheritance received by white families is nearly three times the average inheritance received by Black families.

In lower-income Black neighborhoods, such as the Clearwater neighborhood that Clark’s house is located in, property title issues have a major intergenerational impact, Wright, the University of Florida professor, said.

“The amount of wealth that has been lost in these low-income communities is phenomenal,” she said.

Malekia and Maya McKinney grew up in a predominantly Black neighborhood in St. Petersburg that has been one of the biggest targets of the city’s code enforcement lawsuits. Since 2015, there have been 107 lawsuits filed against properties in the same Zip code, and roughly two-thirds of those cases resulted in foreclosures.

The sisters’ names are still carved into the concrete sidewalk in front of the St. Petersburg property where they grew up.

The house is no longer there. It was demolished after hurricane damage and subsequent shoddy repairs rendered it uninhabitable.

But their mother continued to make mortgage payments on the property even after the house was gone, hoping to pass it down to her daughters.

As Malekia stood on the property recently with Maya, it was as though she was back in her childhood home.

“I can literally close my eyes and tell you where everything was,” she said.

The sisters hoped to rebuild on the property and raise their own families there. It had been the site of childhood birthday parties and family cookouts. They imagined building one large house, or maybe two smaller ones side-by-side. At one point they’d even gotten blueprints drawn up.

But that all changed a few years ago when St. Petersburg foreclosed over unpaid property liens stemming from the house demolition and maintenance.

Malekia says her mother had been paying back the cost of the demolition, but had fallen behind on payments when she was getting cancer treatment. Her mother ultimately died in 2011.

But it wasn’t until 2018 that the city filed suit to foreclose on the property — initially filing against McKinney’s mother, Donna Grayson, despite her being dead for seven years.

“How can you foreclose on a dead person?” Malekia wondered.

Maya wrote a letter to the court begging to find a solution to keep the property.

“My sister and I watched my mother fight for this property, struggling to keep up with payments our entire childhood even into early adulthood and for this reason we would like a fair chance at keeping and maintaining our mother’s property,” Maya wrote to the court on May 9, 2018.

The sisters tried everything they could think of to hold on to it.

They hired a paralegal to help them file responses in the case — arguing that because the city had waited so long to file its case, the statute of limitations had passed.

Malekia went to the city’s code enforcement office to try to work out a deal.

“A lot of people don’t think they’re able to fight against the city,” she said. “I went down there diligently.”

But all of their efforts went nowhere.

The mortgage on the property had been paid off, but they were told that the only way they could keep the property would be if they could pay off the $28,000 outstanding on the lien balance.

“We were like, for what?” Malekia said. “Why would we pay $28,000 for something we already own?”

The sisters didn’t have access to that kind of money, and so on Oct. 11, 2018 the property was auctioned off and bought by the city of St. Petersburg for $30,000, a little more than the balance owed on the liens. The sisters had nothing to show for the sale and the property remains vacant today — in no better shape than before the lawsuit.

“That was the only inheritance we had from my mother,” Malekia said.

“They took it away from us.”



[REMAINING ARTICLE IN EXCESS OF 20,000 CHARACTERS IS AT THE ARTICLE LINK.]


 

mikeabn

Finally not a lurker!
Around here code enforcement is whimsical, whatever they go on a rampage about at any given time. A year or two ago it was house numbers being displayed; before that it was more than one she'd on a house lot (in effect but not enforced sine the 70s. Here in NJ there is no opportunity to rectify, it is an immediate fine.
 

Publius

TB Fanatic
The people can petition referendum to put it on the ballot if they should do away with it this all tougher.
With hard times coming in the near future it's in the best interest of the people to undo this free for all grab by local and state government.
 

Granny Franny

Senior Member
Code enforcement should not be allowed to take a home from somebody by any means. Racking up 500K in fines is ridiculous, especially when the individual is too broke to pay the initial fine for the same offense or unable to remedy it right away. Taking the home is theft, plain and simple. There was a time in this country where neighbors actually helped one another instead of fining them and turning them in if they didn't like something about them. A community would actually pull together to help the widow or elderly or those who had fallen on hard times rather than kick them in the butt while taking away everything they own. Shame on the communities that are allowing this to happen.

Sure there may be some situations that require additional action, but hiring a lawyer with the sole goal to get money owed to a city by taking away people's homes is shameful. And shame on the lawyer for his own greed.
 

Kathy in FL

Administrator
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In some cases, that is plain theft by govt.

In the cases this particular article was citing as the most egregious examples, it wasn't always the code enforcement fines that created the biggest stumbling block, probate and failure to address what would have been easy fixes/repairs to start with were.

As landlords we are constant targets of Code Enforcement and tenants also try and weaponize them for their own purposes. We have to fix what tenants break but we also get it into the record when it is due to tenant housekeeping practices and then send them a bill. If they don't pay it we give them a 7 day notice and if they still don't pay it we will evict them. And we've won every time. Make sure you CYA and address issues in a timely manner - not ignoring it like it really isn't going to happen to you - and you'll win.
 

Kathy in FL

Administrator
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St. Pete had already "forgiven" in excess of $5 million in code enforcement fines during the same period they were bringing the law suits. These people could have easily gotten the same, they just didn't act in a timely manner including making sure the title was clearly in their name. Both of the major cases they reported on had that very thing as a major problem, they could not provide a title of who actually owned the property because they didn't take care of the probate issues.

We've had probate concerns come up on the forum several times in the last year. This is just one more reason to get this taken care of rather than letting your descendants suffer.
 

Granny Franny

Senior Member
Kathy, I'm not trying to argue with you. I believe that we have gotten away from trying to help one another and have now become so reliant on the nanny state that we fail to recognize our own responsibility to help our neighbors. Laws have become so complicated that you have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to defend yourself - even when you are innocent. Believe it or not, most people can't afford it and just give up rather than try to go through the process. That feeds the homeless and underemployed problem and just increases the nanny state. As a nation, we need to get back to basics and do what makes sense. I also realize it's more likely that pigs will start flying tomorrow.

I know from your posts that you are a landlord and have a different perspective, but I also believe it's not solely your responsibility or any other landlord's responsibility. People can be bad, they can be lowlifes and they can do you serious harm as a landlord or an individual. I just think we as a society need to look more to the individual and fair treatment for those who have legitimately fallen on hard times than we do today.
 

WalknTrot

Veteran Member
Going to happen a lot now that Boomers are starting to die off and their basement-dwelling, know-nothing, do-nothing kids inherit and proceed to let the place fall down around their ears. I personally know of several impending situations just like this coming up within a few years. Zero resources (or prospects), zero skills, zero ambition.
 

Kathy in FL

Administrator
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Kathy, I'm not trying to argue with you. I believe that we have gotten away from trying to help one another and have now become so reliant on the nanny state that we fail to recognize our own responsibility to help our neighbors. Laws have become so complicated that you have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to defend yourself - even when you are innocent. Believe it or not, most people can't afford it and just give up rather than try to go through the process. That feeds the homeless and underemployed problem and just increases the nanny state. As a nation, we need to get back to basics and do what makes sense. I also realize it's more likely that pigs will start flying tomorrow.

I know from your posts that you are a landlord and have a different perspective, but I also believe it's not solely your responsibility or any other landlord's responsibility. People can be bad, they can be lowlifes and they can do you serious harm as a landlord or an individual. I just think we as a society need to look more to the individual and fair treatment for those who have legitimately fallen on hard times than we do today.

Granny, I don't have a problem with differences in opinions at all. I don't look at it as arguing most of the time. I know my experience is different. That's okay too. But I also know how much money is out there in community programs that they people could have easily accessed to get him replacing a roof, fixing this that or the other. And I know people in these types of neighborhoods know how to access such money. Gee whiz, the amount of money some of our tenants have access to despite being "low to low-middle" income is insane. The covid hand outs alone would have gone a long way to taking care of their situations.

What a lot of those people had were probate problems first and code enforcement problems second. Had they gotten the title of the home cleaned up they would have easily gotten everything else taken care of ... but they didn't do things in a timely manner and ignoring a problem or waiting for someone else to fix it is a recipe for disaster and also speaks to irresponsibility.

Many of these code enforcement things go on for years before it gets to foreclosure. Usually by that point the house can't even be lived in because it is in such bad shape. And this doesn't happy in a vacuum. Houses in bad repair create issues in neighborhoods. If they are vacant they can get taken over by squatters and vagrants. They cause the Neighboring homes to be infested with rats and roaches. They can be fire and safety hazards.

As a landlord we have a legal and moral duty to take care of the property we lease to others. The neighboring properties sometimes interfere with this because they don't keep their trash cleaned up, their landscaping managed, their fences in good repair, etc. Yet we are the ones that take the brunt of the code enforcement hastle.

And we've also helped some of our neighbors by helping with trees etc., moving trash/debris in proper bundles to be picked up by the garbage, and I've personally helped a few over the years with minor repairs like fixing porch lights, reseating a toilet or changing toilet guts, and I've even changed out a couple of fans. I have to know the neighbors on a first name basis however before I do it these day because people are so damn litigious. I nearly got myself in trouble helping an old black woman that had a house next to one of our properties. This was before BLM and all that but the "activists" tried to give me a hard time for being nice to her and playing housekeeper to keep her quality of life up. If those idiots would have put down their plaquards and blowhorns and picked up a broom or rake to help her out a hella lot more would have been accomplished. Those buttwipes didn't even have enough brains to be ashamed. I was the one that called her nephew that lived out of state to get permission to do what I did and he came down the next month, saw the straights she was in and he took her home with him after putting the house on the market. It was before the 2007 ruckus so it was sold for a good bit of money. I still get a Christmas card from the family every year and the old lady is still alive and apparently happy as a clam.

There's lots of sad stories out there. Sometimes you can help do something about them and sometimes people get in their own way of receiving help.
 

Granny Franny

Senior Member
If those idiots would have put down their plaquards and blowhorns and picked up a broom or rake to help her out a hella lot more would have been accomplished. Those buttwipes didn't even have enough brains to be ashamed.
And therein lies the problem. I think we agree more than disagree. Like I said in my post, it's more likely that pigs will start flying tomorrow than that anything will change with how we as a society (not just you or me) view each other as individuals and try to actually help one another. I would still like to hope that someday people would take responsibility for their actions, and turn for help as a last resort. I do believe in a hand-up rather than a hand-out, but still believe in helping where we can. Maybe pigs will fly the day after tomorrow?
 

MountainBiker

Veteran Member
I had been under the impression that Florida was under conservative leadership under DeSantis but I guess not. That or my thinking that conservatives valued property rights is wrong, but apparently liberal snob zoning is the way Florida rolls. Up here in bluest of blue Vermont, people would scratch their head at such a thing as code enforcement. People here have a right to own poorly maintained homes and choose not to mow their lawns if that's what they want. Don't like a sloppy neighbor, then don't live next to one, but how they care for their property is none of your business if you choose to. And I say all this as someone whose large property is always well maintained and kept park-like. I have 4 near neighbors. Two are kept pristine like mine, one is average, and the 4th is always pigged up, but I would never expect the town to tell them to better maintain it just because I'd prefer it that way. My property, my decision as to how well I maintain it. How it affects your property values is your problem. Don't like mine, make me an offer.
 

Wildweasel

F-4 Phantoms Phorever
[I had been under the impression that Florida was under conservative leadership under DeSantis but I guess not. That or my thinking that conservatives valued property rights is wrong, but apparently liberal snob zoning is the way Florida rolls.[/b] Up here in bluest of blue Vermont, people would scratch their head at such a thing as code enforcement. People here have a right to own poorly maintained homes and choose not to mow their lawns if that's what they want. Don't like a sloppy neighbor, then don't live next to one, but how they care for their property is none of your business if you choose to. And I say all this as someone whose large property is always well maintained and kept park-like. I have 4 near neighbors. Two are kept pristine like mine, one is average, and the 4th is always pigged up, but I would never expect the town to tell them to better maintain it just because I'd prefer it that way. My property, my decision as to how well I maintain it. How it affects your property values is your problem. Don't like mine, make me an offer.
DeSantis is a Florida politician like politicians at all levels in the state. Which means he dances to the tune of the highest-contributing developers and runs the state to the benefit of those developers when it comes into question.
 

Kathy in FL

Administrator
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I had been under the impression that Florida was under conservative leadership under DeSantis but I guess not. That or my thinking that conservatives valued property rights is wrong, but apparently liberal snob zoning is the way Florida rolls. Up here in bluest of blue Vermont, people would scratch their head at such a thing as code enforcement. People here have a right to own poorly maintained homes and choose not to mow their lawns if that's what they want. Don't like a sloppy neighbor, then don't live next to one, but how they care for their property is none of your business if you choose to. And I say all this as someone whose large property is always well maintained and kept park-like. I have 4 near neighbors. Two are kept pristine like mine, one is average, and the 4th is always pigged up, but I would never expect the town to tell them to better maintain it just because I'd prefer it that way. My property, my decision as to how well I maintain it. How it affects your property values is your problem. Don't like mine, make me an offer.

You need to remember they were referring to large cities. When you have neighbors, it is just like anything else ... your rights run parallel to your neighbors, they don't lay on top of them. So, if the way you keep your house creates problems for your neighbors ... create vermin infestations, bring down property values, create crime environment, create health and safety risks, etc. that is when the municipal entities are supposed to step in. Better than your neighbor fire bombing your eyesore. At least with the county you get a chance. if you cheese off your neighbors enough, you just may not.

Does Code Enforcement go too far? Sometimes yes. But there are also homeowners that don't take care of their personal responsibilities. And therein lies the rub.
 

Publius

TB Fanatic
People that build up trash that becomes a vermin problem falls under public health and safety and in some states this will get a house condemned until it is cleaned up (check local laws). Land lords can find themselves in trouble for allowing this to happen.
I used to be a licensed Plumber and I was required by law to report such things to the local town and county governments' as its viewed as a public health and safety issue. I knew a carpenter that was hired to do work on a house and he reported the house that he thought Was to far gone to live in the town a sent a county engineer to inspect it and condemned the house and ordered it torn down ASAP before anyone could get hurt by going inside the building, the land lord was not to happy about it and really this does not happen very often.
 
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MountainBiker

Veteran Member
You need to remember they were referring to large cities. When you have neighbors, it is just like anything else ... your rights run parallel to your neighbors, they don't lay on top of them. So, if the way you keep your house creates problems for your neighbors ... create vermin infestations, bring down property values, create crime environment, create health and safety risks, etc. that is when the municipal entities are supposed to step in. Better than your neighbor fire bombing your eyesore. At least with the county you get a chance. if you cheese off your neighbors enough, you just may not.

Does Code Enforcement go too far? Sometimes yes. But there are also homeowners that don't take care of their personal responsibilities. And therein lies the rub.
There is a big difference between garbage piled up that is attracting rats and taking someone's house because they are missing a few roof shingles or some siding has come off, or the house needs to be painted or the grass is too high. Citing people for that and if they are too poor or too sick or working too many hours to get to it to make repairs, then taking their home from them is snob zoning clear and simple. It is not anything I'd ever think conservatives would go along with. I mean if up here in Bernie Land we respect fundamental property rights I would think conservative States could too.

If a property was a clear and present health hazard to the community then I can see some intervention, but never for aesthetics so as to please neighbors. There must be plenty of HOA neighborhoods to live in for those that want to control everything their neighbor does with their property.
 

Kathy in FL

Administrator
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There is a big difference between garbage piled up that is attracting rats and taking someone's house because they are missing a few roof shingles or some siding has come off, or the house needs to be painted or the grass is too high. Citing people for that and if they are too poor or too sick or working too many hours to get to it to make repairs, then taking their home from them is snob zoning clear and simple. It is not anything I'd ever think conservatives would go along with. I mean if up here in Bernie Land we respect fundamental property rights I would think conservative States could too.

If a property was a clear and present health hazard to the community then I can see some intervention, but never for aesthetics so as to please neighbors. There must be plenty of HOA neighborhoods to live in for those that want to control everything their neighbor does with their property.

Code enforcement in Florida doesn't site for a few shingles. An HOA sure will however. That's a different issue completely. Code enforcement will cite for other things. Depends on how bad the lack of paint is. If it is an old house that might have lead-based paint on it, or lead-based paint showing through you could get a warning but a gallon of paint rolled over it closes the case.

The houses in the article ... did you read the entire thing? ... were in ridiculously bad shape with code enforcement cases, some in excess of a decade or more. And of the two specific cases the article stated, the bigger problem for the "home owners" is that they did not have a clear title because of probate. Both specifically states that had they taken care of the probate in a timely fashion they could have gotten assistance with repairs and/or gotten a stop or hold put on the foreclosure. Because they didn't do what they needed to the result was they didn't have a clear title which meant they could get access to the assistance.

I explained up front that the article was more of a reminder that probate is important since it had come up on the forum several times recently. Don't fall for the hanky stomping and socialist agenda garbage. Yes, overactive Code Enforcement can be an issue. I've done my own battles with them. But when you are a homeowner, or claim to be an owner of a home, you have a responsibility that goes along with your ownership. Florida is not the appalachians or Kentucky's hollers. Our weather makes having deteriorating houses a real risk for everyone around them. Flying debris. Our water tables are very high so run off can be a significant issue. Rats, roaches, palmetto bugs, bats roosting in attics, snakes, 'possums, feral cats and dogs (no winter to kill them off), feral ducks and other birds that are just gross and that's including peacocks if you can believe it though most of those around Tampa have been rounded up and dealt with, carry diseases also. And now we have invasive species taking up residence in poorly maintained buildings.

Do you think people who feed bears should be cited when they draw dangerous animals into their neighborhoods? Same sort of thing applies in Florida.

Here in Tampa, about 15 years ago I guess, when crack houses were a real danger, the then mayor went through the city and foreclosed on a bunch of houses that were being used as drug dens and flop houses. Those houses, if they were not emptied of druggies and rehabilitated (the property, not the druggies) were foreclosed on and torn down. The people living in those neighborhoods were so happy and crime went down.

But back to the examples used in the article ... their first problem was failure to take responsibility for dealing with the probate and getting the property in their name. Second issue was failure to maintain the property despite years, sometimes decades, of warnings.
 

Meemur

Voice on the Prairie / FJB!
I can see both sides of this issue. And I've stepped in and helped relatives of neighbors by keeping the grass cut and the lawn picked up when their relative who owned the house either died or went into a nursing home. Keeping the lawn mowed in the summer and the snow cleared from the city sidewalks in the winter is half of the battle.

But I've also lived under Code Nazis who went out of their way to bother homeowners. In Dearborn, Michigan back in the 80s, home owners were cited for cracked windows. In my case, there was a cracked attic window after a major storm. I was in the process of the selling the house (part of an estate) and was cited less than 5 days after that happened! That was BS. I let my lawyer handle that. And, yes, it got fixed several weeks later.

Right now, there is a wanna-be Karen on city council who comes up with all sorts of invasive crap. I'm going to work on voting her out during the next cycle. We just want to be left alone over here.
 

Kathy in FL

Administrator
_______________
I can see both sides of this issue. And I've stepped in and helped relatives of neighbors by keeping the grass cut and the lawn picked up when their relative who owned the house either died or went into a nursing home. Keeping the lawn mowed in the summer and the snow cleared from the city sidewalks in the winter is half of the battle.

But I've also lived under Code Nazis who went out of their way to bother homeowners. In Dearborn, Michigan back in the 80s, home owners were cited for cracked windows. In my case, there was a cracked attic window after a major storm. I was in the process of the selling the house (part of an estate) and was cited less than 5 days after that happened! That was BS. I let my lawyer handle that. And, yes, it got fixed several weeks later.

Right now, there is a wanna-be Karen on city council who comes up with all sorts of invasive crap. I'm going to work on voting her out during the next cycle. We just want to be left alone over here.

Yes, I can see both sides of the issue as well. But specific cases? I've had my run ins with "over enthusiastic" CE's that somehow think they got more authority than they do despite the badge and gun they carry. That said I've also had to deal with knotheads that won't keep their property up and it winds up being a problem for us for various reasons.
 

amarilla

Veteran Member
I was warned about having a trash can lid on the lawn after the approved time (which was the morning after trash pickup) in Dearborn, Michigan. It had snowed and covered it. Next morning was a bit of a thaw and it was seen. DH was on a business trip and I had 3 young kids. I honestly thought it had blown away. That put me on the known offender list for trash. They would come out and check my trash. That also meant they were measuring my lawn. It was never knee high or something but seriously we got cited and fined for an inch too long. To me that shouldn't be cited. A lawn that is so high vermin are living in it yes but not an inch. Dearborn was a nightmare for code. They charged for everything you wanted to do to the house. They charged for the least violation. I get they didn't want the problems of Detroit but they had no balance.
 

Kathy in FL

Administrator
_______________
I was warned about having a trash can lid on the lawn after the approved time (which was the morning after trash pickup) in Dearborn, Michigan. It had snowed and covered it. Next morning was a bit of a thaw and it was seen. DH was on a business trip and I had 3 young kids. I honestly thought it had blown away. That put me on the known offender list for trash. They would come out and check my trash. That also meant they were measuring my lawn. It was never knee high or something but seriously we got cited and fined for an inch too long. To me that shouldn't be cited. A lawn that is so high vermin are living in it yes but not an inch. Dearborn was a nightmare for code. They charged for everything you wanted to do to the house. They charged for the least violation. I get they didn't want the problems of Detroit but they had no balance.

Florida leaves that to the HOAs which most people seem to really jonez to live in. Not me, but a lot of people that are concerned with property values and gated communities. Many HOAs are now trying to make sure that all of their houses are owner-occupied. They don't want renters.
 

summerthyme

Administrator
_______________
The biggest problem I have is that this is NOT being driven by a common sense desire for safe homes and neighborhoods. It's ONE slimy lawyer who is using greed to push cities into "maximizing revenue" on the backs of the poor, or incapable.

That's absolutely wrong!

It reeks of the same mentality of "red light cameras"... sure, everyone agrees that people should stop and wait at red lights. But I remember one bitter February night, around 2 am, when I ran every red light in the nearest small city (9 of them), trying to get my Amish neighbor to the hospital before her 10th baby arrived.

Of course, I was hoping a cop would show up and provide an escort, but naturally, they weren't around. But red light cameras would have meant 9 tickets and Fines arriving in my mailbox shortly after. Even though there was no other traffic and I slowed and looked both ways before proceeding at every one.

This story isn’t about code enforcement, it's about revenue enhancement, on the backs of those least able to afford it.

Summerthyme
 

Kathy in FL

Administrator
_______________
The biggest problem I have is that this is NOT being driven by a common sense desire for safe homes and neighborhoods. It's ONE slimy lawyer who is using greed to push cities into "maximizing revenue" on the backs of the poor, or incapable.

That's absolutely wrong!

It reeks of the same mentality of "red light cameras"... sure, everyone agrees that people should stop and wait at red lights. But I remember one bitter February night, around 2 am, when I ran every red light in the nearest small city (9 of them), trying to get my Amish neighbor to the hospital before her 10th baby arrived.

Of course, I was hoping a cop would show up and provide an escort, but naturally, they weren't around. But red light cameras would have meant 9 tickets and Fines arriving in my mailbox shortly after. Even though there was no other traffic and I slowed and looked both ways before proceeding at every one.

This story isn’t about code enforcement, it's about revenue enhancement, on the backs of those least able to afford it.

Summerthyme

The guy mentioned in the article is just one lawyer and he stuck out because he used to mostly help people get out of trouble with code enforcement. There are actually a bunch of lawyers like the guy mentioned. This is simply a move by the municipalities to prevent these ever escalating fines on the books. No more anyone dragging their feet, there's a process and it is wrong for the cities to not take care of their responsibilities which gives time for these fines and crap to add up. The flip side of that however is that people are going to have to take care of their own crap ... probate and title issues, not leaving the "blue tarps" on roofs for years rather than repair storm damage, etc. Home ownership is a responsibility every bit as much as it is a privilege or inheritance or right if you can afford it.

Then let us not forget that the insurance companies are jumping on this bandwagon. If you have a mortgage all of this just becomes a bigger mess.

The issue can get downright more complicated than most people realize, want to accept. Then if you have kids living in these places and/or at-risk adults/older adults the level of complications go through the roof.
 

Jeff B.

Don’t let the Piss Ants get you down…
This a well debated topic! Different opinions and no hostility!! As far as HOA's and the like, we had one when we lived outside of Columbia, SC many years ago. I wasn't thrilled with it, but we bought knowing it was a thing. I had to apply for all sorts of stuff that we wanted to do around the place. Every item got approved and in two cases they came out and then wanted to use pictures, materials and finish for guidelines. Once we moved to DFW/Texas, my preference was for a home NOT in an HOA, which we found (luckily, the market at that time was scorching hot, 1998) and bought. Although we don't have an HOA (someone tried to start one years ago and found out it was not wanted) the Town has become more involved in code enforcement, to include maintenance items and appearance. I had one instance of someone reporting me for improving the town owned greenbelt land behind our house. My wife met with the Codes person who agreed that the complaints were meritless and if there were more, would warn them that they could be considered harassment, they stopped. :)

All in all, I think like most things, there is a happy medium. Swing too far in either direction and conflict increases. While in an unincorporated rural area there should be very little code enforcement, in incorporated areas, its governments role to try to maintain the minimum standards of the community. Derelict and collapsing structures are both health and safety hazards and should be subject to actions by local government. But, where's the line between your grass being too long and a place being a pile of rubbish? Remember the definition of pornography? I know it when I see it? ;)

We'll never have perfection in real life, so we have to strive for our imperfect but acceptable condition.
 

PghPanther

Has No Life - Lives on TB
Living by myself the best thing I ever did was sell my home.

There are issues from time to time living in a small apartment but they pale compared to the potential list of issues of being single getting older and still owning a home.

If you need the space for a spouse and/or family I get that a home is key for many but for me a home at this stage in my life is a liability.
 

mikeabn

Finally not a lurker!
Living by myself the best thing I ever did was sell my home.

There are issues from time to time living in a small apartment but they pale compared to the potential list of issues of being single getting older and still owning a home.

If you need the space for a spouse and/or family I get that a home is key for many but for me a home at this stage in my life is a liability.
Starting to think that way myself.
 

MountainBiker

Veteran Member
I will acknowledge that in frigid Northen New England we don't have the bugs, snakes, and other creepy crawlies like folks do down South. Cold is our friend, and we thus don't deal with whatever kinds of problems such things cause Southrons.

That said, I'm guessing people just must be different in Florida and in other States that err on the side of a nanny govt. that controls the minutia of people's lives. When I bought my place it was a bit of a fixer upper. Replaced the roof & all the windows, gutted 3 bathrooms & redid the kitchen, replaced every light fixture inside & out and upgraded the electric service. And a whole lot more inside & outside the house. None of it needed a building permit or any kind of inspection. Why? The culture up here is people are adults and are responsible for their own property. The onus was on me to hire a qualified inspector before I bought the house, which I did, and I made the sellers pay for repairs that weren't readily visible to me the buyer; things like the wood stove chimney needing to be lined.

My son built a new house here recently. He had to get a building permit so that the town knew he was building it, and a septic permit from the State, but otherwise no inspections, occupancy permits etc. Again, he's an adult and responsible to do it right and any future buyer is responsible to know what they're buying.

And guess what? Homes aren't falling apart or burning down left and right because of shoddy work. People can take responsibility for their own lives w/o govt. agents hovering over them. What truly shocks me though is this in Bernie Land where the Dems have a super majority in the legislature and can do anything they want. Conservatives can voice opposition but we don't have much say in anything. I was just told that there is not a single Republican Mayor in the State. The Dems are in total control and yet local govt. has a very small footprint. Our taxes are high on account we spend lavishly on the schools, not local bureaucracy; inspectors and all. My town is in excess of $21,000 per kid per year. Classrooms average something like 10 students. We also don't have large police forces in the "policing for profit" mode seen in many other States.

It isn't a north-south issue though, nor a D vs R issue. Cross the border into NY and you have vast govt. bureaucracy comparatively. Same thing in MA. When I lived there I actually had an illegal downspout. Why was it illegal? It dumped rainwater onto my lawn instead of being piped underground to a storm sewer which in turn sent it to a retention pond for the subdivision. The builder had erred and it was too much trouble to fix it, and fortunately the neighborhood "Karen" that drove around 5 mph looking for violations never spotted it on account she couldn't see it from the road.
 

PghPanther

Has No Life - Lives on TB
Starting to think that way myself.
The first weekend you wake up sans a home and living in a small apartment and have no "to do list" for a house inside or out that weekend..........you will think you hit the relaxation lobby.......or at least a regular weekend "staycation".

My home was 3,000 sq ft.........with 3/4 acre on a golf course with 3 holes and 10 acres of water outside my backyard. I don't even want to tell you what it was like taking care of it all in physical labor (22 hours each weekend during the growing season) let alone my out of pocket costs every month/year.

Yeah it looks nice but all I saw after awhile as flushing money away trying to keep it all looking like what you see below.

The only thing I can say was "the view" sold my house during the housing collapse of 2008 and left me with some profit for all my sweat, tears and money I sank into the place and I don't miss any of it one bit.

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PghPanther

Has No Life - Lives on TB
On more thing on this house deal.............the HOA was pretty strict where I had my home especially about lawn care. Well I grew up poor and working at a country club after school and during summer months which is way I laugh so hard at the "Caddy Shack" because I did every job in that movie at one time or another.

But I told myself when I own a home someday, I will have the best yard anyone has ever seen after working on golf courses all those years for those rich people.

Well I over did it.........and below is a good look at my yard and folks I grew this from seed not sod.

As it ended up I had the best yard probably in the whole metro area. (LOL....I was out of my mind obsessed with it).

Strangly enough it was a Sam Kinison in a stand up comic routine that changed my mind about everything. He told a story where he had this house and was bending over all hours of the day weeding his yard worry about what the neighbors and drive byers might think of his place and started thinking. "What the hell am I doing this for??.........To impress people that drive by???...........uhh uhhh uhhhh ahh Agggghhh!!!!" (starting going into that yelling thing he does).

It remined me of a saying by Samuel Clements (aka Mark Twain). "Americans spend far too much money trying to impress people they really don't care about".

I thought about that thinking cars and lawns fit exactly what Twain was talking about.

with expensive cars you worry about every dent or ding it gets...........with the yard I worried about anyone running over the curb or was out there in the middle of the night with a flashlight removing leaves off it.

As a result, I finally said that's enough of my raising the stock price at Lowe's and Home Depot with my weekend purchases and slave labor on the place........so I stopped the insanity and sold it all.

Free at last...........Free at last!!!...................Thank God almighty I'm free at last!!!!
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Jeff Allen

Producer
PghPanther, I'm so happy you are now free of your self imposed chains!!! At 54 I think I've broken them as well...recently ordered a new car. A couple of days later my grandson wanted to sit on my lap. For a 1/2 hr!!! I realized I loved that MUCH MORE than the fact I was gonna pay cash for a new car in a few weeks. hmmmm...like you said, FREE AT LAST!! Cars just a tool...houses just a tool (I'm a landlord too)...Grandson is special!
Great thread BTW!
 

Jeff Allen

Producer
Me thinks nothing is at hated by Americans as the freedom of their neighbors. Lots of excuses..."vermin"..."safety"..."its for the children"..."eyesore"....etc....
Hey, thats fine, but lets at least be honest and quite imagining we live in a society that approximates actual "freedom"!!!
Things like pollution, air/groundwater, etc, sure. But visually annoying?
And...in populous areas I do "get" vermin as well....

It seems to me the real issue is that heavily populated areas love to spread laws that make sense for them upon those who only wish to live apart from them.

A special thank you to Kathy for spending a lot of time presenting a very reasoned argument.

J
 

Publius

TB Fanatic
I have sat here thinking about this and they can only fight this by filing a case against the town, city, county or state under Eminent Domain I.E. government taking property without proper compensation! Government is using so called code violations to take your property as a means of extra revenues or turning a profit.

Also Post # 7 above about Petition for Referendum to abolish these code laws have proven to be very effective its just a matter of getting enough people to sign the petition and the next election the matter will be in the ballot for all to vote on.
 

Kathy in FL

Administrator
_______________
I think a lot of people are forgetting, we are talking cities with hundreds of thousands of people living cheek by jowl. In the city of Tampa alone there are over 400K people. In Hillsborough County where Tampa is there is over a million and a half. Doubt we are talking the same city/county population in most of New England.

Would I love to be able to just roll along with zero code enforcement interference? Sure. And that IS the way we role where our rural BOL is located. But unfortunately when you have a bunch of irresponsible property owners (including commercial) that will use every excuse in the book not to fulfill their duties which impacts their neighbors adversely, you will wind up with a vacuum filled by government entities that some people will welcome.

The two stories in the article got into the fix they were in because they ignored their responsibilities. It wasn't just general maintenance, it was the fact they didn't clear/clean up the title after inheriting the house because the people they inherited the house from didn't take care of their legal responsibilities either and left a mess for their families to clean up both figuratively and literally.
 

Granny Franny

Senior Member
I laugh so hard at the "Caddy Shack" because I did every job in that movie at one time or another.
Please tell me you didn't try to blow up the gophers! ;)

That is a beautiful property and house you had there, but I can see why you wanted something easier. Must have been a ton of work to keep that up like that.
 
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