Camden groups fear effect of slow property rehab process

With millions of dollars in federal grants available to fix up dilapidated homes, Camden nonprofit redevelopment groups are eager for the city to use the state Abandoned Properties Rehabilitation Act, as it promised it would this year.

But using the law - pitched as a more efficient way than foreclosure to take control of blighted properties - has proven to be a lengthier process than many imagined. As the months pass, there is a growing sense of urgency among some groups to get titles to the properties they applied to rehabilitate before those essential grants expire.

Heart of Camden, the city's housing authority, and two for-profit developers have until February 2013 to use $14 million on a shared project that includes rehabbing 49 properties to be acquired through the act. The measure gives cities the power to hold a special tax sale or use eminent domain to gain control of derelict properties.

Heart of Camden plans to rehab and resell 13 abandoned homes in Waterfront South, where one of every five homes is vacant.

The 2013 deadline is for "not only getting the properties, but constructing [the homes] as well," said Helene Pierson, Heart of Camden's executive director.

It could up to a year for the group even to have access to the lots, according to officials.

Though City Council approved the use of the act in 2004, it wasn't until this spring that Mayor Dana L. Redd put together a team of department heads to create the legislation's mandated list of abandoned real estate.

Since then, the Business Growth and Development Team has evaluated more than 500 parcels whose locations have been submitted by community development groups and residents. About 400 have been approved for the next step in the process and 146 are expected to be added next week.

Of those, redevelopers have expressed interest in 69.

"We are moving forward as expeditiously as possible," City Attorney Marc Riondino said in an e-mail.

"We would love to move all the properties on the list to development," he said.

Once a property is certified as abandoned, it is placed on a list that is published in a newspaper. A notice also is put on the door of the property.

If an owner does not respond within about a month, a redevelopment group may submit a rehab plan. If it is accepted by the city, the process leading to eminent domain begins. But all the while, the city must continue to try to locate the property's owner.

"We have an obligation to find those people," said John Fiorilla of Capehart & Scatchard, the law firm contracted by the city and Cramer Hill Community Development Corp. to handle the condemnation of some properties on the list.

The acquisition process, which involves a title search and property appraisal, has just begun for the first round of homes, which were placed on Camden's list in May. It could be from a few months to over a year before those that qualify are available for redevelopment.

"It really depends how long it takes to find" owners, Fiorilla said. An appeal by the owner can prolong the process, he said.

None of this matters to residents who have to live next to the decrepit structures.

"Of course I'm frustrated," Antonio Jimenez said in Spanish, referring to the abandoned house adjacent to his on Concord Avenue. The property was the staging area for the mayor's news conference in May.

"It's been only promises," Jimenez said. "Nothing has been done."

The house next to Jimenez's - down the street from St. Anthony of Padua Church, whose leaders have nagged the city for years to address neighborhood blight - is among the first 20 the Cramer Hill group hopes to acquire.

The process has taken longer than developers had expected in part because the city has passed individual resolutions for each step in the process.

In Newark, where the Abandoned Properties Act has been in use since 2008, it took about two years to get the first group of properties cleared for redevelopment, said Mike Meyer, the city's director of housing.

"We had to make sure all our ducks were in a row to make sure we would survive the legal scrutiny," Meyer said. Because the act was new, there was awareness that each step would set protocol.

The act "is a great tool, but it requires a lot of work," he said.

For the next batches of homes, the process went more quickly, Meyer said.

Out of the 450 abandoned Newark properties that survived the initial appeal process, only 17 have been acquired by the city through eminent domain. Owners located during the legal process rehabbed 100 homes and demolished 34 others.

"The goal for this law is to make property owners aware that if they don't step in and fix the properties, we will take them," Meyer said.