Unfinished Homes in Somee Areas Begin to Crumble

Unfinished Lee County homes start to crumble
By Don Ruane • druane@news-press.com • April 23, 2008

Some 220 houses - almost all of them in Lehigh Acres - stand abandoned in Lee County as stark reminders of a derailed real estate market.

A record 10,700 foreclosures last year are stark evidence of the market's condition.
Weeds have overtaken yards and obscure the view of doors and windows at some homes. At others sites, pipes, septic tanks and construction materials are exposed, causing safety hazards.
Still other houses are a magnet for vandals and thieves who break in and strip the place of construction materials or leave behind walls spray-painted with graffiti.
"Juveniles are squatting in them. Criminals are squatting in them," said Lee County sheriff's Capt. Ed Tamayo, who oversees Lehigh Acres.
In many cases the property owners correct the problems after they've been contacted by code enforcement, but some owners go before Lee County's hearing examiner and risk daily fines, said Joan LaGuardia, spokeswoman for the county's Community Development department.
The county's list of abandoned houses includes four properties in south Fort Myers, Tice, Bokeelia and Matlacha, but it doesn't include properties in Lee's cities.
The county considers a construction project abandoned
when it hasn't passed an inspection in six months. There probably are other unreported cases scattered around unincorporated Lee that haven't made the list, LaGuardia said.
Persistent problem
The bulk of abandoned houses is in Lehigh.
Nine full-time code enforcement officers work the area, where about 8,600 code cases were handled last year.
Deputies frequently find signs of partying, drug use, vandalism and people living in abandoned houses, Tamayo said.
The buildings are hard to police because they are spread throughout Lehigh's nearly 100 square miles, Tamayo said. Some areas are like ghost towns, where abandoned construction is mixed with finished, unoccupied houses, he said.
Problems with 132 of the Lehigh sites have been resolved with the help of the property owner or through a cleanup with the help of Lee County's solid waste division. Still, 70 cases are pending before the Lee County Hearing Examiner's Office, which can fine a property owner for code violations. There are 34 fines accumulating at a rate of $150 to $200 a day.
In Bonita Springs, code enforcement officers are investigating one potential abandoned property, said Chris Campbell, the department supervisor.
"It's premature in the investigation to determine if it's abandoned or not," Campbell said.
Cape Coral, meanwhile, has been trying to get abandoned houses cleaned up.
The number of abandoned homes in the Cape wasn't available Tuesday, but last November, police revived the Neighborhood Watch program in part because of abandoned homes.
Council in December spent $90,000 on a contract for mowing lawns at abandoned homes.
In Lehigh, the houses are in various stages of construction. Some are eyesores with weeds and piles of dirt overtaking yards. Others are unsafe because of exposed construction materials.
One property on North Richmond Avenue in Lehigh is a slab with pipes rising over the concrete. Erosion is undercutting the slab at one corner and at a second point along the front of the slab.
Other houses, such as those on Yolanda Street and Mercedes Court, have tar paper on the roof but no shingles. No stucco has been applied to the concrete block walls.
A house at 5204 Lee St. has gaps in the tar paper on the roof and an exposed septic tank and drain field.
Children broke into the home and left graffiti, said neighbor Andy Morris. Two doors of the boarded-up house were ajar recently.
Houses in such condition can further erode property values in an already-depressed market, but Morris expects to live with the situation for awhile.
"There are too many houses for sale out here," he said.
Who pays?
The county is left to deal with cleaning up the mess as it faces its own budget cuts.
"We have to cut our budget in code enforcement. We have to cut across the board," LaGuardia said.
In many cases the property owner is trying to resolve the situation, LaGuardia said.
When owners can't be found or won't cooperate, the county can put a lien on the property to recover demolition or clean-up costs, which vary depending on the state of the property. But the county may not collect on the lien for some time.
"There may be no one to pay for the demolition except the taxpayers," LaGuardia said.
So far only one house has been demolished in Lehigh because its walls were in danger of collapsing, she said. The cost to knock it down: $3,000.
Some owners are waiting for foreclosure to be completed to erase their responsibility for the problem.
Sonet and Robert Goodwin of Pine Island and Coldwater, Mich., are waiting to get out from under an investment property on the county's list. They had a problem with their builder, Merit Homes, and got caught in the real estate tailspin, Sonet Goodwin said.
"It was 85 percent done and they couldn't get it done," said Sonet Goodwin, who also has a vacant lot she planned to develop.
"We put a lot of money down on those two and we lost it," she said.
— Staff writers Jennifer Misthal and Jacob Ogles contributed to this report.

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