The Mold House

[spinbaby]

http://www.wideopenwest.com/~gaver/

One of the bad things happening in today's economy is that many people are homeless while at the same time many houses sit abandoned and deteriorating because of foreclosure. Here's a page put up by a woman (daughter of a friend of mine, actually) disgusted by the state of a house in foreclosure in her neighborhood. The owners abandoned it, the house sprung leaks, and the mold grew. What a perfect waste.

[izzie]

1. Sad when you see people that are homeless every place.

Sometimes a capital type society stinks.

[Kolesar]

2. My buddy got mold in his lungs while sweeping, now he has asthma

He was hospitalized and has lung damage. He was sweeping the basement of their century home.

We had a house sit empty in my neighborhood when the owner died. They shut the gas heat off, it froze, pipes broke and it flooded. I could see them knocking down the house.

Think about all that lost equity! Like this house in Reynoldsburg, tens of thousands of dollars wasted.

[TexasMexican]

3. Mold BS and Squatters Rights.

I know here in Texas for a while we had a bunch of people suing about mold and whatnot.

To me is sounded like a lot of BS, I couldnt really imagine mold being all that terrible to clean up. I mean my family cleans the house with just some Clorox and water.

That being said as for the abandoned properties maybe we should go back to giving homeless squatters rights and stuff.

Like back in western times. If a squatter lived on a piece of land that no one was using for long enough and if he did any improvments to it then belonged to him or something.

[Xithras]

5. You can still do that in California

Here, if you live on a piece of abandoned property for five years, AND pay the property taxes, AND maintain the property as a legal home or business meeting all local codes, then you have the right to sue for ownership of a piece of property. Whether or not you'll win depends on the judge, but people here have used this law to take over abandoned properties in the past. Of course, if you're caught prior to the 5 year deadline you're SOL.

[On the Road]

4. I Agree -- It is a Waste

There are 14,000 abandoned homes in Baltimore. My girlfriend and I have bought several and have fixed them up and rented them.

But the red tape is unbelievable if the house has been abandoned. One of the houses had an outside electric cable stolen, but between the electrical contractor, the city inspector, and the utility, Li-Ping has been trying for six months to get the power restored. Two weeks ago, BG&E objected to the placement of the cable, so even though there was no safety hazard the whole process had to start over again.

To make matters worse, one of her renovators allowed a family to move in without telling her. (He said their house burned down.) She decided to let them stay since they had no place to live, and also because they would generate some rental income and prevent breakins. The family has been without electricity since the summer, and literally runs an extension cord to the house next door for $10 a week.

The city inpsector was justifiably outraged when he saw this, but his solution was to kick the family out on the street until the electicity could be brought back up. No help there.

The city also administers Section 8 housing assistance for low-income people. However, the inspection process requires so much work to bring the houses up to code that it effectively discourages landlords to participate. For example, every one of the eight windows in one of her houses had to be torn out and replaced. All of them old but functional double-hung windows. We have both dropped out of the Section 8 process as a result of this experience.

The mold question is mostly one of liability. Lawsuits for mold are prone to abuse and difficult to defend, so people avoid them.

There are thousands of people who would love to buy and renovate these houses. But sometimes the government is an obstacle. It's got to be rethought if the problem is going to be solved. This is one area that Republicans constantly score points on. Their solution is to abandon government involvement altogether. If the Democratic Party is to gain the hearts of more people, it needs to be a facilitator, not an obstacle.