ZOMBIE HOUSES - Oregon Knowledge Bank

PORTLAND POLICE BUREAU EAST PRECINCT

ZOMBIE HOUSES

THE PO RTL AN D APPROAC H TO VACAN T HOMES

HERMAN GOLDSTEIN AWARD APPLICATION

CHARLIE HALES, MAYOR L AW R E N C E P. O ' D E A I I I , C H I E F O F P O L I C E

Table of Contents

Scan ............................................................ 4 Analysis ...................................................... 5 Response.................................................... 9 Assessment .............................................. 12 Agency and Officer Information......... 16 Appendix A ............................................. 17 Appendix B ............................................. 18 Appendix C ............................................. 19 Appendix D............................................. 20 Appendix E ............................................. 23 Appendix F.............................................. 27 Appendix G............................................. 32

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SUMMARY This Goldstein Award submission, Zombie Houses, details the City of Portland's response to abandoned properties and the issues associated with them. While present prior to the "Great Recession," this issue became more prevalent as a result of the large number of abandoned homes. These homes, often in state of limbo in terms of ownership, proved difficult to manage using conventional police tactics. In analyzing the problem it became apparent that a more comprehensive strategy would be needed to address this complex issue. Working with a broad range of partners, Portland's Police Bureau, Bureau of Environmental Services and Office of Neighborhood Involvement developed and implemented a coordinated strategy to mitigate the issues associated with these properties. A subsequent analysis indicated that this strategy was highly effective in addressing the problem.

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SCAN

Zombie Foreclosure - "a property that the homeowner has abandoned and assumed the home has become the property of the lender."

In the first quarter of 2001 the United States' 90 day delinquency rate (a measure of homeowners in financial distress) was approximately 0.6% of homes and the foreclosures start rate was approximately 0.4%. By Q1 2009 these numbers has risen to above 3.5% and nearly 1.5% respectively. With more than a five-fold increase in delinquencies and three-fold increase in foreclosure the Unites States began the process of home Zombification.

In Portland Oregon, like many western states, this problem was especially bad. In January of 2009, Oregon was among the top 5 states in foreclosure fillings1. Traditionally among the top five states in homelessness rates, the financial crisis created the perfect storm for what has become a nearly decade long struggle to address this issue. Portland was the epicenter for much of this activity. The Portland Police Bureau was soon dealing with hundreds of such homes a year. An increasing number of homes became occupied illegally and many of these began to cause livability issues for the surrounding neighborhoods. Some houses were taken over by squatters from the Occupy movement with assistance from Take Back the Land, an organized effort to occupy vacant homes. The majority of the houses, however, were occupied by squatters with no particular political agenda.

Recognizing the emerging nature of this problem, the Portland Office of Neighborhood Involvement (ONI) and the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) decided to focus their Annual Problem-Solving Summit on addressing vacant properties. This event was held October 27, 2010 (see appendix A for agenda) and included over three hours of guest speaker presentations on the nature of the housing crisis and what could be done to help address the problem. Speakers included attorneys focusing on landlord/tenant issues, civil law related to city zoning and deputy district attorneys discussing the criminal aspects of this issue. Additional speakers included real estate brokers, bank loss mitigation professionals, insurance and title insurances agents as well as the city's code compliance officer.

The event helped begin a dialogue around what the involved parties could do to help each other. It led to greater cooperation between ONI, the PPB and the Portland's Bureau of Developmental Services (BDS), which among other functions was tasked with code compliance. A result of this meeting was a commitment between ONI, the PPB and BDS to start on ongoing series of meetings to analyze how best to address vacant/abandoned properties.

Another significant accomplishment of this summit was the "Resolving safety & livability problems at REO (bank-owned) properties." This guide was compiled by Stephanie Reynolds, the Crime Prevention Program Manager at the City of Portland (for an abbreviated version see: , also the

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cover page is provided in appendix B). It contained advice on how to address problem properties, identified important laws and ordinances and helped provide a one-stop location for the information shared at the summit. This guide began the process of defining the problems caused by vacant, bank-owned houses. These issues included:

? Squatting inside the location/camping in the yard, frequently causing health concerns related to the disposal of bodily wastes

? Looting of the home, frequently causing safety concerns as plumbing and electrical wire etc. are removed

? Young adults/children breaking into the location out of curiosity ? Fire hazards and other safety concerns as the building falls into disrepair ? The location becoming an attractive nuisance and/or eyesore.

ANALYSIS In late 2011 and early 2012, ONI, BDS, the PPB, the Fire Bureau, and others created the Extremely Distressed Property Workgroup. As the group began to analyze the problem, they identified 523 lender-owned homes (generally foreclosures) and more than 2000 homes with a notice of delinquency (being more than 90-days behind in payments and precursor to foreclosure). Mapping these homes revealed that the issue extended to nearly all parts of the city (see Figure 1). However, while all areas of the city were impacted, Portland's East Precinct was hit particularly hard with nearly half the homes falling within its boundaries (see Figure 2) and five of the PPB's 60 police districts (beats) containing over ? of all lender owned homes. All of these districts were in east/southeast Portland.

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Figure 1. Portland's Lender Owned Homes

Figure 2. East Portland Lender Owned Homes by Police District

The property crime rate in Portland, which had been at record lows as late as 2009, was beginning to rebound. These crimes had risen from 269 per 1,000 residents in 2009 to 291

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per 1,000 residents in 2011. While no analysis had yet been conducted tying the two phenomena there were concerns and anecdotal reports that at least some portion of the increased crime was being driven by these homes.

Given the civil nature of this problem there was legal analysis required to determine the options available. This required working closely with both city and county attorneys. A number of challenges were identified:

? Establishing ownership was often difficult. Often these properties were in a sort of legal "limbo" where the owner (defined as the person who had loan on the home) had abandoned them but the loan holder had not asserted property rights.

o This could be further complicated by the fact that seizing the home often took more than a year, even if the loan holder was involved.

? Even after establishing ownership, it was often difficult to convince the responsible party to participate in resolving problems. Banks and other lenders had become flooded with properties and were often unable and/or unwilling to take responsibility for the property. The opacity associated with the foreclosure process provided an excuse for not addressing the issue.

? The largely civil nature of the issue. This prevented the PPB from using many of the tools they were accustomed to. This required a re-thinking of how to address this problem.

? Individuals and groups actively working to use the situation to address housing issues. This ranged from individuals and groups taking a principled stance that these homes should be used to address homelessness to others simply seeking a free place to sleep (See Appendix C for the cover and introduction of a pamphlet which provided instructions on how to obtain free housing using these homes).

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In February of 2014, the PPB Strategic Services Division conducted a follow-up analysis of a number of these locations which East Precincts Neighborhood Response Team had been working. Seventeen properties had been identified as nuisance properties and had an abatement strategy implemented. The initial analysis consisted of examining crimes and calls for service for one year prior to finishing the abatement strategy (generally this date consisted of a final board-up date) and one year post abatement. Nine properties met these criteria. Figure 3 shows these locations.

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Figure 3. East Precinct Nuisance Locations

The nine locations were looked at individually for both crimes and calls for service. Five of the nine locations saw a decrease in dispatched calls and five of the nine locations saw a decrease in Part I and II crimes. Overall, dispatched calls fell by 4.6% in the year after abatement and crimes fell by 28.0%. These decreases occurred during the 2012 to 2014 period where both crimes and calls for service were raising citywide. Table 1 shows the crimes and dispatched calls by location for the year prior to and the year after abatement.

Table 1. Changes in Calls and Crimes

Location

Dispatched calls Dispatched calls prior to abatement after abatement

16109 SE Powell Blvd

100

111

415 NE 80th Ave

226

241

12917 NE Pacific St.

44

32

851 NE 118th Ave.

86

68

2118 NE 121st Ave

68

86

14053 SE Main St.

39

41

1706 SE 130th Ave

49

46

3008 SE 111th Ave

70

37

9720 SE Holgate Blvd

102

86

Total

784

748

Part I & II crimes prior to abatement

19 71 7 11 17 7 19 22 34 207

Part I & II crimes after to abatement

26 37 14 14 9 8 13 7 21 149

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