Foreclosed Property Target of Proposed City Law

The neighbors of 1909 Aripine Ave. in Bethlehem’s Clearview neighborhood recently got so fed up with grass and weeds that had grown more than three feet high, they charged in with their own weed whackers to clean things up.

The overgrown grass and weeds at the property in the city’s far west side are not the only problems, according to Jim Defrancisco, one of the neighbors who came to speak at City Council’s Community Development Committee meeting on Monday night.

Part of the roof and the house’s aluminum siding blew away during Hurricane Sandy and was never fixed, Defrancisco said. Now, the abandoned house has become a haven for pests, he said. Dead animals litter the abandoned house’s back yard, while mice have invaded his house, he said.

The property has not remained a persistent nuisance for a lack of trying on the part of the city’s Bureau of Code Enforcement, according to Mike Palos, Bethlehem’s chief housing inspector.

For years, the city has tried to find someone who is responsible—most likely a bank or mortgage company—for the abandoned house, sent out 31 letters and made even more telephone calls.

But after Monday night’s meeting, Palos is hoping he will soon have a new tool to deal with problem bank-owned properties—an issue that has grown in significance since the mortgage crisis of 2008.

New legislation, which the committee recommended to the full council, will require banks to enter properties in foreclosure into an online registry that can easily be referenced by Palos and other city employees.

The registry will require the bank or lender to provide contact information for those responsible, whether that person is a bank executive or a company hired by the bank to provide for necessary maintenance.

Bethlehem currently has no less than 331 properties that have been foreclosed on or are in the process of being foreclosed on, according to Ted Mucellin, a representative of the Federal Property Registration Corp., a private company that has been lobbying cities to adopt this legislation.

The company is in the business of running these registries on behalf of the cities that adopt the law. Once the law is adopted, banks must pay the registry company a set fee for every new foreclosure. The fee proceeds are split with the municipalities, who pay nothing.

The fine for failing to register will be no less than $1,000 per property per year, under the ordinance under consideration in Bethlehem.

Council is now tentatively scheduled to consider the new law on first reading at its July 16 regular meeting.

Easton adopted the law earlier this month, but is now in the process of conducting a request for proposals to hire a company to provide the registry, Mucellin said. Allentown did it in 2012 and hired Mucellin’s firm.

One of the services the company provides is records research to help cities determine just who does hold the note on problem abandoned properties like the one on Aripine Avenue.

With the law in place, code enforcement officers no longer have to become detectives to try to determine who owns the property they are trying to get into compliance, Mucellin said.

“It’s not a silver bullet, but it’s a tool to help code enforcement officers to spend their time more wisely,” he said.