Mount Olive grapples with dilapidated housing
By Steve Herring
Published in News on June 24, 2018 3:06 AM
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News-Argus/STEVE HERRING
Mount Olive Town Manager Charles Brown, left, and Mayor Joe Scott stand in front of one of the more than 80 dilapidated, vacant or abandoned houses in town.
MOUNT OLIVE -- The town of Mount Olive is paying the price for its failure to deal with a housing problem that has been developing over the past several decades.
Vacant, abandoned and dilapidated houses are costing the town more than just lost tax dollars, said Mayor Joe Scott and Town Manager Charles Brown.
"This isn't new, but it is new to the public that we are taking on this challenge," Scott said. "This board of commissioners, mayor and town manager are taking it on.
"It hadn't been addressed like it should have been."
Scott said, hopefully, they can tackle it with some positive changes.
There are currently 85 such properties scattered across town, he said.
Even if the tax bill was only $1,000 per home that would still total $85,000, Scott said.
But that is just in lost taxes, he said.
"You are losing water and sewer revenue," Brown said. "The snowball affect is you may have the nicest house on the planet, but if you are living next to an abandoned, dilapidated property, it does bad things to the value of your property.
"It's not just the property that looks bad and rundown. It is the impact on the other houses in the neighborhood."
It also costs the town between $50,000 to $60,000 a year to mow lawns at abandoned properties, Brown said.
Last year, there were 600 mowing operations that created a huge drain on the town, Brown said.on the planet, but if you are living next to an abandoned, dilapidated property, it does bad things to the value of your property.
"It's not just the property that looks bad and rundown. It is the impact on the other houses in the neighborhood."
It also costs the town between $50,000 to $60,000 a year to mow lawns at abandoned properties, Brown said.
Last year, there were 600 mowing operations that created a huge drain on the town, Brown said. Demolishing a house will cost the town $3,000 to $5,000 depending on its size, he said.
The town tries to work with homeowners and give them as much time as possible to bring a house up to standards before demolishing it, Brown said.
"One of the reasons for that is we simply don't have the resources to go do a mass demolition," Brown said.
"There are organizations in this country working with the federal government to find resources to do that, but they are not having much success in North Carolina."
It goes even further, Scott said.
"Your sales tax, you have loss there," he said. "Education, the amount of money put in per child, you are losing that also. It just affects everything when these things happen.
"Our prices on houses here in Mount Olive, and I just looked this up the other day, the average price of a house is $75,0000. That's terrible. When you have 33 percent poverty on top of that, you've got 40 percent of the houses in this town that are considered rental properties."
That is a high number for the size of a town like Mount Olive, he said.
A lot of the landlords do not live in Mount Olive, he said.
"They live out of town," Scott said. "They live out of state. So, therefore, out of sight, out of mind.
"They have handlers to come in and collect the money from the renters. Sometimes the places are despicable."
People who don't even live in Mount Olive look after them, he said.
They have handlers to pick up the money who could care less what the houses look like, Scott said.
The town is compiling a spreadsheet on who owns the 85 houses and where they live, Brown said.
One way the town is looking to address housing is through a proposal from the Mount Olive Planning Board for a livability fee.
"We currently have no means to determine the livability of rental property when that property changes hands," Brown said.
"What that means is when a rental property changes hands that the inspections department checks that property to make sure it has the basic necessities of life, if you will."
That includes smoke and fire protection, heat and whether the house is actually in a livable condition, Brown said.
The town board took no action on the proposal at its June meeting, but asked that the Planning Board prepare an ordinance and bring it back for possible action in July.
"If you have seen some of the conditions that some of the folks who rent homes in this town have to live in, I think it would impress upon you the necessity for some kind of control over the conditions of those residences," Scott said.
The Planning Board membership includes property owners who think it is important to ensure that all houses in Mount Olive are safe and sound for the people who live in town, Scott said.
Scott commended the Planning Board for bringing the issue to the board's attention.
"All of our renters, we are going to include in this livability permit that all water and utilities must be in the renter's name and not in the landlord's name," Scott said.
"Therefore, we will know who goes in and goes out."
The 85 dilapidated and abandoned houses in Mount Olive didn't happen overnight, but rather the downward trend has been a gradual occurrence over the last 30 years, Scott said.
Back in the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s the local economy began to show signs of weakening, he said.
When Young Squire, Burlington Industries, Jan Mark and other companies started closing because of jobs moving away, people had to find jobs elsewhere, he said.
"Homes were rented out, some even abandoned," Scott said.
"On top of that, aging residents on fixed incomes were unable to keep up their properties as well as they might like to. This caused blight and poverty to come to our town.
"What was once middle-income neighborhoods became rental property and poverty. This has caused our tax base to drop, which means it's harder to meet obligations to the other residents of our town."
That forces higher taxes on the rest of the community, he said.
Those middle-class neighborhoods weren't rich, but neither were they poor, and they paid their share of taxes, Scott said.
"Today we see the middle class disappearing, and the gap is wider between the poor and rich," he said.
"The danger is that they'll slip further. Once a couple of properties are left vacant on a block, neighborhoods can get caught in a downward spiral that's difficult to reverse.
"We will do ourselves a disservice if we don't pay attention to the middle class now. Middle class neighborhoods evoke an image of relative prosperity."
But a lot of the homes that are vacant could be turned into nice rentals with a little work, Brown said.
That would be revenue-producing for whomever owns it, he said.
There is no quick fix to the problem, Scott said.
"To get this back up we have got to attract jobs," Scott said. "Our goal in the next four years is to attract small companies and businesses to fill that job gap.
"We have got to improve our educational system. It just affects everything that we do. That being said, it is a real challenge for our town."
That includes working to find teachers in their skills and fields, such as math and science, to come here, affordable housing for the working class and Section 8 housing for the poor, he said.
"On a positive note, we are seeing many good changes," Scott said. "We are seeing growth in Southern Bank, University of Mount Olive and Mt. Olive Pickle Co. Small changes make a big difference overall."