The Springfield City Council passed a resolution to crack down on nuisance property that is unhealthy and unsafe.
The resolution, which passed by a 9-0 vote on Aug. 21, tasks City Manager Jason Gage and any relevant committees with analyzing data and providing reports on nuisance properties, as well as exploring code changes and recommendations on how to address them.
Sponsored by council members Brandon Jenson and Monica Horton, the resolution received support and input from several citizens during the resolution’s public hearing.
“This resolution is really just that very first step of collecting that data, pulling together the stakeholders, and then by requiring a quarterly report, just as the police chief does for crime,” Jenson told the Springfield Daily Citizen before the Aug. 21 City Council meeting. “By requiring that quarterly report, we can start to understand where the issues are, and as we craft solutions, actually monitor how they’re rolling out in real time.”
‘Decades in the making‘
Jenson, who was elected as the Zone 3 council member in April, said nuisance property concerns came up “quite often” during a campaign in which quality housing was a key issue, which led him to request the resolution be brought before the City Council.
“This has always been sort of a priority of mine — to make sure that we’re providing quality affordable housing for our residents,” Jenson said, adding that the current portfolio of nuisance properties in Springfield has been “decades in the making.”
Nuisance properties can pose public safety and public health concerns, from increased crime and fire risks to exposure to mold, lead paint and other dangerous materials.
Neighborhoods in Jenson and Horton’s west Springfield zones boasted some of the highest number of code enforcement cases among owner and renter-occupied residences between Jan. 1, 2015 and Dec. 31, 2020, according to data provided by the City of Springfield.
“It’s really a systemic, entrenched issue,” Jenson said. “That’s not something that you’re able to just pass a single ordinance and say, ‘Okay, you know what, we did the work, we’re done, we’ve solved the problem.’ You really have to have a good baseline of data to know where the issues actually are, in terms of the ownership of properties, the occupancy of properties, what types of structures are these typically issues with.”
With that data, he said, the city can work with stakeholders to identify potential solutions, whether that be through proactive enforcement or incentives to help with improvement projects.
“The last thing we would want to do is take a single broad approach that may impact a little old lady who just can’t mow her lawn anymore,” Jenson said. “It certainly would not be our goal to place a bunch of fines and force that back property owner to go through all the bureaucracy of our enforcement process, and it’s certainly not the goal to displace some of our neediest families, who may be in housing of last resort…we can’t build solutions that minimize those concerns unless we have the data and the stakeholders involved to do that.”
Wide array of stakeholders give ‘meaningful and important feedback’ on resolution
In drafting the resolution, Jenson solicited input and received some support from organizations, including the Neighborhood Advisory Council, the Community Partnership of the Ozarks, Springfield Tenants Unite, the Greater Springfield Apartment and Housing Association, Home Builders Association of Greater Springfield, NAACP Springfield and the Housing Authority of Springfield.
Jenson also gathered input from the Greater Springfield Board of Realtors and the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce.
“I can’t think of an issue as messy as nuisance properties that has had this broad of a coalition standing together and saying, ‘Look, this is a very serious issue for our community, and we are all committed to finding a resolution for it,’” Jenson said.
While the resolution, in summation, tasks the city to begin analyzing data on nuisance property and lays the groundwork for crafting solutions, it also takes a multi-pronged approach that Jenson landed on after dozens of edits:
- Directs the city manager to provide written reports regarding certain nuisance citation data;
- Charges the Finance and Administration Committee to conduct an analysis of escalating fees and/or fines related to chronic nuisance properties and provide recommendations based on such analysis by the City Council;
- Charges the Community Involvement Committee to issue a report regarding the feasibility of all recommendations within the Nuisance Property Work Group Final Report dated Feb. 23, 2023, and present findings on each recommendation to the City Council;
- Directs the city manager to evaluate how up to three comparable communities effectively address nuisance properties;
- Directs the city manager to analyze options for streamlining the notice and abatement processes in Chapter 26, Article III of Springfield’s Code of Ordinances, and to prepare proposed code changes;
- Directs the city manager to prepare proposed code changes for the purpose of providing definitions for “chronic nuisance properties” and “substantial progress” to be incorporated into Chapter 26, Article III;
- Requests the city manager to explore ways to utilize city programs to help to find pre-enforcement resolutions for property maintenance prior to the issuance of notice of violation and the enforcement process;
- Directs the city manager to engage with, or appoint a designee to engage with, the Community Partnership of the Ozarks’ Housing Collaborative Nuisance Property Subcommittee and similar groups or organizations as necessary to address the City Council’s directives in the resolution.
Public, council members express support
All 16 of the speakers during the public hearing Aug. 21 expressed support for the resolution for a multitude of reasons.
Lonnie Funk, who is the president of both the Greater Springfield Apartment and Housing Association and property management company Affinity Management Services, said he was initially dubious of the resolution when he was first approached by Jenson, but was ultimately encouraged by the consideration of his organizations’ concerns and expressed support for the ordinance.
“As an association, typically, it’s kind of a one-shoe-fits-all from the media as to how we manage our business and we thought that the process that [Jenson] went through, the resolution that he has created was one that we thought would be very beneficial and finally trying to find the sources of the problems,” Funk told council members.
Tom McFarland, a tenant in the Phelps Grove neighborhood, provided his own health issues that he suggested stemmed from an exposure to black mold in a previous rental, and emphasized that nuisance properties are something that’s “lived.”
“Nuisance properties are not merely an upsetting thing that some folks have to observe while passing by on their way across town,” McFarland said. “Nuisance properties are gaps. They’re spaces where the environment for our neighbors, community members, friends and family members has lapsed from habitable, livable, reasonable and tolerable.”
Alice Barber, a leader with Springfield Tenants Unite, said renters often come to their organization searching for help dealing with nuisance property problems.
“Those tenants are coming to us, because they tried to report those problems to their landlords first, and nothing got fixed, and then they reported it to the city, and it still didn’t get fixed…I trust that the Building Development Services [and] Citizen Resource Center is doing the best it can to respond to tenants complaints, but that system, as it is, is too limited — it can’t act until somebody makes a report,” Barber said.
Jeremy Dean, a former City Council candidate, encouraged the continued involvement of all stakeholders as the city explores ways to address nuisance properties. Additionally, Dean said that he wants to streamline the notice of abatement process, while acknowledging concerns about due property rights.
Biblical examples were used in support of the resolution, quality of place was tied into the discussion and Jenson’s championing of the measure was commended.
Multiple speakers, both from the public and the City Council, acknowledged the complexity of the issue, and that finding workable solutions would be challenging. With a “data-driven approach,” council members and the public expressed confidence that it was a good first step to reverse Springfield’s “epidemic” of nuisance properties.
Resolution considers recommendations, findings of previous reports on nuisance properties
Several speakers mentioned the collaborative research that has already been collected on nuisance properties in Springfield.
Multiple references were made to data provided in an ongoing housing study in Springfield, which identified over 2,000 residential properties in “poor, deteriorated or dilapidated condition.”
The recommendations the city will consider from the Nuisance Property Work Group Final Report was presented to the City Council in May by the Neighborhood Advisory Council and the Community Partnership of the Ozarks.
The Nuisance Property Work Group, of which several speakers were involved with, made the following recommendations to the City Council:
- Expand Homeownership Emergency Loan Program
- Employer-Assisted Housing grants
- Community Policing Through Environmental Design grants
- Revamp building and zoning codes
- Commercial incentives for neighborhood hubs
- New residential nuisance staff
- Residential community outreach
- Reduce timelines for nuisance and dangerous buildings
- Establish neighborhood design studio
- Revise down payment assistance
- Realize state approval for land bank program
The full report adds and expands on the recommendations, emphasizing the need to focus on the root causes — disinvestment, poverty, crime and neighborhood betterment — as well as meeting violations “head on.”
