Bakersfield is coming for blighted lots, in the name of housing
Mar. 26—After failing to win bids earlier this month on 16 dilapidated properties deemed a nuisance to residents, the city of Bakersfield is considering option B: How to help out those who did buy them?
It's a position the city has apparently never found itself in before, because as far as anyone can remember, it has never tried to become so directly involved. But its frustrations are not new.
In recent years, more properties considered derelict and abandoned have festered throughout the city's urban core, especially in Ward 2.
"Chronic nuisance properties are problematic for a lot of reasons," Vice Mayor and Ward 2 Councilman Andrae Gonzales said. "They create a negative externality for the whole neighborhood, making it less safe. And we get a lot of complaints from residents."
These are the homes with boarded-up windows and doors, overgrown yards and collapsed roofs — the kind of properties that have incurred a structure fire or are a regular site for transients.
After five years of neglect, and usually because of unpaid property taxes, the county taxman can assert authority to sell the property and auction it the following year.
Local leaders want those lots dealt with, especially the ones they have watched, year after year, sit on the auction list and go unsold.
"There have been a number of properties that have gone to auction for years, and nobody has bid on them," Gonzales said.
Properties go unsold often because they aren't worth the trouble, as there are too many liens against them — various unpaid fines or bills that accrue over time — or they're a mess due to a structure fire or vagrancy.
The city, Gonzales said, wants to be the one to take in the unwanted lots and turn them into prospective homes.
"That's what we're trying to do," Gonzales said. "We're trying to step in if there's no other buyer."
So it was that the city put out the minimum bid on each of 16 properties in a county tax sale earlier this month. The plan, Gonzales said, was to have them rehabilitated through a third-party contractor and turned into affordable housing or used to launch a home ownership program serving first-time buyers.
"Ultimately, we want private enterprise to do its thing, and for the market to work," Gonzales said. "But as far as those gaps where no one is responsive to a property, I think that's where the city should step in and have a role to play."
Gonzales said the city is still figuring what that intervention looks like, since it has never performed that role before.
"We're kind of flying the plane as we're building it," Gonzales said.
Auctions of such properties take place once per year, typically in March, hosted by the Kern County Tax Collector. The starting price is the sum of the property tax owed, plus administrative fees. Anyone can join the bid, including the previous owners: All they have to do is register online and pay a $5,000 deposit.
"You can be in Japan and say, 'Oh my God, I can buy a house in California for $30,000,' not knowing that the house is maybe burnt down or in a horrible area," said Frank St. Clair, a local real estate investor.
According to Kern County Treasurer and Tax Collector Jordan Kaufman, 950 of the 1,050 properties up for auction this year sold — a very good year.
Kaufman said this month's sale was the first in which city officials decided to take part, to his knowledge.
"They have expressed interest before," Kaufman said. "I believe this is the first time they participated in a public auction."
