The Shannondale (née Electrohome, 152 Shanley St) | 8 fl | U/C

[ijmorlan]

I still want to know why expropriation wouldn’t work. I’m pretty sure back taxes have to be paid out of the proceeds of any property transfer, so presumably it would just be an administrative action involving no transfer of money (assuming the taxes exceed the property value).

I am pretty sure the city doesn't want to pay for clean-up, let alone buy it from the dead-beat owner. They already know that it's a huge expense + the "Save the Clock Tower" people who will balk at anything less than full remediation of property.

This truly is a no-win situation for the city. The current owner won't fix it.  The owner will get behind on property taxes again, obviously.

I am guessing in the not too distant future, major water damage it going to occur, OR, it will burn to the ground. One of the two.

My idea is that they would have expropriated more or less as soon as the property was derelict. The value net of outstanding taxes and cleanup should have been negative, so it should have been a non-money administrative transaction; at that point it could be cleaned up on the City’s schedule without having to negotiate with a deadbeat. Instead, it’s a problem, with the City unable to do anything, for years; then eventually the owner buys it at his own tax auction, thus eliminating much of the tax liability while still leaving it as a problem for the City.

I’m reasonably confident there is some legal problem with this. For example, perhaps it is not allowed to charge off the cleanup cost against the expropriation compensation. If this is true, the laws around cleanup and/or expropriation should be changed to avoid property owners getting away with this kind of scam. For all I know, maybe it’s not even legal to charge off outstanding taxes against the expropriation compensation, although that really would be insanely stupid.

Basically, the rule should be that either the property owner behaves responsibly, or they surrender the property. Of course the problem is that probably some person who just likes a messy yard would end up expropriated out of their home, while some well-connected wealthy landowner could still do whatever they want, but my idea is to write the law carefully, making sure that the sort of behaviour that could result in negative consequences is legitimately dangerous like leaving contamination in an abandoned building, not just accumulating projects in the back yard.