Camden plans to demolish nearly 600 houses

Within a two-block stretch of Sheridan Street in Camden, 13 homes have boarded-up windows and bright-orange Department of Public Works stickers marking them for a demolition day that has yet to come.

"I face four of them," said Valerie Roberts, 26, who grew up in the neighborhood and now lives on the 1200 block. "I would love to see them come down. They've been like that 15, 20 years, though."

For decades, Camden's 77,250 residents have lived among vacant dwellings, which drive down property values, harbor crime, and create upkeep nightmares for residents whose homes are attached to crumbling structures.

On Tuesday, the city will launch what it describes as the largest single demolition project in the state by putting out requests for bids to demolish 61 properties in Whitman Park and three in Cramer Hill. A second phase, beginning in a few weeks, is to demolish 534 properties citywide.

"As a lifelong Camden resident, I feel the same way our residents do about vacant and abandoned properties - I don't like them," Mayor Dana L. Redd said. "Camden is now poised to undertake the biggest demolition initiative ever attempted in the city or state. . . . I truly believe this first phase will send a clear message that we are serious about transforming and improving our neighborhoods."

Phase I will be funded with a $970,000 federal Community Development Block Grant. The second $8 million citywide phase will be financed by a bond to be paid off with revenue from a tax on city parking lots.

The process for demolishing abandoned buildings has been slow and confusing in the past. The city did not even keep a list of abandoned properties until Redd's administration, and community development groups have long complained that they are not included in decisions, despite their immediate knowledge of both the problematic structures and how they might be revamped.

As Camden County has amped up the number of police on its metro force, more crimes are being pushed inside, Police Chief Scott Thomson said. Nearly half of all homicides this year occurred inside a structure of some sort, he said. Street shootings are down 47 percent since 2012, he said.

"Abandoned homes do not create crime in and of themselves," Thomson said, "but they do offer illegal opportunities that a community without vacant structures doesn't have."

On Monday afternoon, parked police cruisers dotted the Whitman Park neighborhood.

"There's not many of the drug boys making trouble outside, but they always go in the residences, get the drugs, some go bumming inside," Roberts said.

Camden has 1,629 abandoned residential properties, according to city code enforcement officials. Of those, 598 met the criteria for demolition and 1,031 are slated for stabilization, city officials said. Not all of the properties have been acquired by the city.

Since 2010, the city says, there have been 464 abandoned properties demolished and 2,272 boarded up.

When nonresidential structures are included, the total number of abandoned buildings in the city may be closer to 3,000, according to a survey by CamConnect, a nonprofit research group based in Camden. The group found that Camden has 8,142 empty lots. Vacant parcels and abandoned buildings occupy 37 percent of land in the city.

"There are far more vacant lots in Camden than abandoned buildings," said CamConnect project manager Josh Wheeling. "It's impossible to do something with all of them."

Wheeling said the major hurdle was the expense - as much as $25,000 to tear down one house.

In March, City Council passed the Vacant Property Registration Act, which requires owners of abandoned or foreclosing properties to register and pay annual fees of $500 to $5,000, depending on length of vacancy.

It was unclear how much money the city has taken in since its passage.

Community leaders say they have not seen a list of specific properties that will come down.

"We have groups doing this work on a day-to-day basis that know exactly how many abandoned units there are, which ones are the problem properties," said Manny Delgado of the Cramer Hill Development Corp. "So it seems to make sense to reach out to them. But we haven't gotten any phone call like that."

The city business administrator, Robert Corrales, said that the city has maintained a list for five years and that demolitions were based on suggestions from code-enforcement officials following a citywide survey.

Delgado said there has been "no clear process" for prioritizing properties, and complained of sloppy demolition jobs that have left behind large piles of bricks and debris.

"It hasn't been a really good process to date. Maybe now, with the bonding," he said, "there will be some communication out to the neighborhoods."

Ali Sloan El, a former city councilman who runs the Whitman Park Community Center, said the city should consider Camden jobs when reviewing bids from contractors.

Dozens of young men come through the community center, he said, some recently released from prison and looking for employment. The city's unemployment rate is 17 percent.

"Here's a force that's ready to work, who will otherwise be watching the demolition from their own stoops," he said of Whitman Park residents. "Let's put these guys to work."

Sloan El said that along with North Camden, Whitman Park has some of the most-blighted buildings in the city. Far more than the 61 are vacant, he said, but not all should come down.

"We want to get people living in them and paying taxes."

Roberts' sister Febriah, of Whitman Park, wondered what would happen to all the vacant lots. She said recent demolitions on Thurman Street created littered, overgrown lawns.

"I'd like to know who will be in charge of the properties and what kind of plan there is," she said, adding that she would like to see community gardens pop up. "The community has to step up, too, be more involved in the process."

Source: Philly.com