Addressing ‘blight’ of foreclosed homes

“On almost every street you see a home foreclosed,” said Turbosh Alhadad, remarking on the prevalence of boarded up windows and padlocked doors in his Ozone Park neighborhood. “It affects the community.”
Alhadad, a few doors down from a 106th Street foreclosed home where City Councilmember and State Senate candidate Joseph Addabbo had just held a press conference, was pessimistic about the housing situation.
“Nobody can do anything about it now,” he said.
Addabbo, however, thinks Albany can do something about the dismal foreclosure situation that currently involves 23,000 houses in New York City and nearly 9,200 in Queens.
Addabbo called the Republican State Senate, and presumably his opponent, Senator Serphin Maltese, to task on its failure to pass the Neighborhood Preservation Bill in May of this year. According to Addabbo, the bill - introduced by an all-Democrat roster of legislators and bottled up in committee - would have allowed municipalities to clean up foreclosed properties at the expense of the foreclosing banks.
Addabbo said the measure, Senate Bill 7028, would have helped the “good neighbors” of Queens who are affected by “the blight of a community,” such as the neighborhoods within the 15th Senate District, where Addabbo is attempting to unseat Maltese. The district is home to 14 percent of bank-owned properties in the borough.
Aside from becoming bastions for illegal activity as well as fire and safety hazards, Addabbo cited the devaluation of properties that result from just a single foreclosed home in a given vicinity. One boarded up house, such as the two-story dwelling at 107-36 106th Street, can reduce surrounding property values by $5,000, he said.
“Properties like this have a deleterious effect,” said Community Board 10 Chairwoman Betty Braton, spotlighting a “ripple down effect” from home foreclosures that has devalued over 400,000 homes in Queens - the fifth highest number of neighboring homes devalued by foreclosures in all U.S. counties - and cost the tax base over $9 billion.
“On a block like this, all it takes is one,” Braton said, though Addabbo noted that 12 other homes on that stretch of 106th Street are affected by foreclosures.
While Addabbo chided the Senate for failing to install a measure that would maintain foreclosed homes - and keep surrounding property values stable - Maltese worked to successfully pass bi-partisan legislation that would help keep homes occupied in the first place, said his Chief of Staff Victoria Vattimo.
Senate Bill 8143, unanimously supported and signed into law by Governor Paterson in August, “immediately assists homeowners who are facing foreclosure and implements reforms to help them from losing their homes in the future,” Vattimo said.
Outside Albany and down in Ozone Park, however, residents have seen few signs of tangible progress thus far.
“Something’s gotta be done before people are on the street and all over the place and property values are plummeting,” said David Quintana, a community activist, member of Community Board 10 and editor of the “Lost in the Ozone” blog. “I just care about what happens around here, you know?” he said. “It’s just a general sense of pride in the neighborhood - I’ve lived here all my life.”