Foreclosures hurt neighborhoods
Frank and Denise Pacheco just need to look next door to see what they believe the defining issue is going to be in the November Manteca City Council election.
The issue? What they perceive as the city’s myopic, lackluster and “it’s not our problem” approach to the impact foreclosed homes are having on neighborhoods throughout the city.
Not one neighborhood has escaped the problems of foreclosures. Even upscale Terracina - a gated community in East Manteca off Northgate Drive that has nothing but larger custom homes - has foreclosures.
Frank - a retired dairyman who works hard at keeping his home and yard up on Lovell Way behind Doctors Hospital of Manteca - has gotten to the point his daily constitutional through Manga Terra which was once Manteca’s premiere neighborhood is fraught with frustration.
“You can see places where nobody cares,” Frank said. “There are places with swimming pools that have green water.”
They’re breeding grounds for mosquitoes and potential death traps for kids since many foreclosed homes have broken sections of fence that may become all too attractive for a curious child to wander through.
Denise, who teaches at West High in Tracy, had thought when they moved into their new home on Feb. 14, 1975 to start a family that it would also be the place they’d live in during their retirement.
Says city has allowed creation of slums
Not any more. Between the foreclosures marring their neighborhood and what she called “the slum the city allowed to be created” in and around nearby McNary Circle off North Street, she said she is now getting to the point where she is starting to look forward to the day the market bounces back and they can sell and move from her beloved Manteca.
She doesn’t want to get to that point but she believes that they - as well as other families - will have no choice if elected leaders don’t step up to the plate.
“Nobody builds a slum,” Denise said of the McNary problem where the streets are littered with shopping carts, people sit in the morning sun drinking beer on front steps, park cars on lawns, and crime is almost a daily occurrence. “(Slums are) allowed to be created.”
She draws a parallel between the multi-family housing in the McNary area and what is happening with foreclosures.
Denise believes city leaders have lacked the gumption to hold landlords accountable for their property and how tenants use and abuse it. She sees the same thing happening with investors who are snapping up foreclosures.
And from the couple’s perspective, the city has already demonstrated just how impotent they are in dealing with banks and foreclosed properties.
“They (the staff) tell us there is nothing they can do to require that lawns be kept watered and not be allowed to die and turn into weeds because it predates a 1991 city law,” she said.
But she is quick to note that at the point of sale the courts have allowed existing property to be encumbered with new requirements for health and safety including smoke detectors and strapped in water heaters.
Wants council candidates to say exactly what they would do if elected
The condition of property - that the city’s own Manteca Redevelopment Agency guidelines say can lead to blight and create significant community health and safety issues - should be an issue. Denise wants to hear council candidates explain how they intend to hold landlords responsible for upkeep of their property.
As for the 1992 threshold, she noted that when they bought in 1975 there was no restriction on when property owners could water and now there is.
“Now they can tell us when we can and can’t water and we (comply),” she said.
Countrywide Mortgage has foreclosed on the home next door. Their communications with the company and the Realtor representative have been anything but responsive.
They were told the bank pays to have a gardener come out every three weeks. But with the water shut off, all the gardener does is mow weeds.
An e-mail to Assistant City Manager Karen McLaughlin brought the fire and police departments out. But McLaughlin noted the city ordinance requires abatement proceedings if the weeds are above six inches, which they are not. As far as the code enforcement officer, the response was it didn’t meet the council defined threshold of the city’s much touted “vacant structures” ordinance that threatened up to $1,000 day in fines for non-maintained abandoned property.
It is why neither husband nor wife fault city staff for what they believe is an inexcusable situation that is tearing apart the fabric of neighborhoods throughout Manteca. She puts the blame squarely on the five council members for not being tough enough or having the vision to see what the next step is in the foreclosure process.
Tired of platitudes from leaders, they want action
The Pachecos and several neighbors noted an out-of-town landlord took over one home and has let renters get away without maintaining the property, specifically watering and cutting the grass. They have had to continually pressure the landlord even telling them of an ordinance that can get them fined if the property isn’t maintained.
But then they found out the city law only protects those in newer homes and not them.
“We’ve paid out taxes and we’ve been good residents,” she said.
Denise recalled the downtown effort four years ago where city agencies combined together to hold landlords responsible for drug use, crime, public defecation, and assorted other issued including building code violations. She doesn’t understand why similar checks aren’t made in other crime areas such as McNary Circle.
The Pachecos want answers from incumbents Jack Snyder and Steve DeBrum as to why nothing is being done to give staff the tools to help save neighborhoods. She won’t buy the argument that neighbors have to pitch in and do their part because they already are. One neighbor is watering an adjoining lawn and is having it cut as well.
They are doing their part and they want to know what the city isn’t doing theirs.
It’s a question she also wants announced challengers Ben Cantu, Debbie Moorehead and Samuel Anderson to answer as well. They just don’t want platitudes. They want specific action programs outlined.
“Our City Council lacks vision in dealing with problems impacting neighborhoods,” she said.
And it’s not just a concern she sees facing older neighborhoods. She noted those in and around Woodward Park as well as southwest Manteca are going through the same problems.
“It is devaluing our property,” Frank said.
Denise is quick to add their quality of life as well.
A few doors away, they’ve been told another home is going into foreclosure. It doesn’t take too much imagination for them to see that the problems will start spreading.
There are currently 1,500 properties - almost all single-family homes - in various stages of foreclosure throughout Manteca.
The problems they create are significant.
It wasn’t too many months ago when a home across the street from them was in foreclosure. It had been left vacant.
Those inspecting the home for possible purchase found the bathroom had been destroyed. Also, the garage has been broken into and appears to have been used as an illegal hangout for juvenile delinquents. Weeds were much higher than the city’s six-inch threshold.
That is exactly what the Pachecos don’t want to see.
And given the Nov. 4 election will probably hit about the same time record foreclosures will flood the Manteca market, they think the No. 1 issue needs to be how this council - and the next council - deals with property maintenance through the enforcement of existing laws and putting new ones on the books that are also enforced to make sure landlords or new owners don’t spread blight.