Kansas City Must Toughen Its Property Code Laws

By Mark Forsythe The Kansas City Post When it comes to property ownership, everybody's a Libertarian. It's a uniquely American trait that we feel owning a house is no different than owning any other piece of chattel. People seem to take the attitude that "it's my house and I'll do whatever I want with it." True to a point, but where do the rights of the many outweigh the rights of the individual? Where does your right to "do whatever you want" end out of respect for your neighbors' rights? What can, or should be done when a house is allowed to deteriorate to such a point that it becomes a problem for the rest of the neighborhood? Is it the right of the owner to allow the property to reach such a state that that it literally begins to fall in on itself? Is it the right of the property owner to drag down the property value of his neighbors? I've seen homes being lived in that have missing windows and pigeons flying in and out. One person's eccentric neighbor is another's nuisance. Property rights is a sticky subject, one that politicians are loathe to address. As the laws work in Kansas City, a property owner can be cited for property code violations and mandated to remedy the problems. Of course anyone who has ever gone to bat for the neighborhood against a habitual violator will tell you, the laws have no teeth and it's easy for a property owner to continually avoid bringing their property up to code. Case after case goes through Housing Court with little or no results achieved. For the most part, neighbors have little recourse if one individual chooses to "do whatever they want" with their property. Kansas City has to toughen its laws. There needs to be real remedies to alleviate the systematic destruction of our housing stock. I'm not worried about peeling paint or the occasional noxious weed. I'm talking about once beautiful houses allowed to deteriorate to a point they become dangerous and uninhabitable and must eventually be torn down. The first step is to attach all property code fines to the property tax bill. This eliminates some owners' ability to not pay the fines and ignore the eventual bench warrants issued for their arrest. They may still be able to avoid arrest, but they have to pay their property taxes. The second step is to remove the three year amnesty period for paying property taxes once a code violation fine has been assessed. Right now the game played by some irresponsible property owners is to stay days ahead of the three year law. If a property owner allows their taxes to go more than three years without paying, the property is seized by the county and sold on the courthouse steps. This three year grace period should not apply to people who are allowing their property to deteriorate to an unusable state. Finally, the city should re-establish the building re-use program. Years ago we had an individual employed by the city whose job it was to find new owners for dilapidated properties. In some cases a property owner doesn't want to own the structure, can't find a buyer, but just can't bring themselves to let it go to the county for free. That's where the city stepped in and found the rare individual who would pay a fair price and bring the property back from the dead. With these three small changes, I believe we can alleviate the loss of some of our historic housing stock as well as put properties in the hands of people who actually want to own them. All without repossession, courthouse auctions and criminal proceedings.