Abandoned Properties Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

State Preparing To Expand Dilapidated Properties Project

The state is preparing to expand its dilapidated properties program.

In late September, Gov. Jim Justice announced $9.2 million for 21 communities participating in the pilot Dilapidated Properties Program.

Just two months later, the state is sending out a survey to all 55 counties and 168 municipalities looking to expand the program and help more communities remove abandoned structures.

“It’s a program that’s been established to assist communities, municipalities and counties all over West Virginia, and dealing with the issue of abandoned and dilapidated structures and properties in their own communities,” said Ed Maguire, the environmental advocate for the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (WVDEP).

He said the program’s aim is to help revitalize communities by repurposing a limited local resource.

“Structures that had been built historically are concentrated on the rare percentage of the landscape that’s actually flat you can build on,” Maguire said. “There’s not been anybody to come along with the funding to enable those structures to be removed so that then that flat ground could be made available for new use by others.”

Maguire pointed out that efforts to address dilapidated structures, in West Virginia and nationally, have existed before the West Virginia Legislature passed Senate Bill 368 in 2021, which authorized the WVDEP to develop a statewide program. In particular, he points to the complicated process of using funding that has federal components.

“Bottom line, we’re providing funding to them,” Maguire said. “The communities will go out, get their own bids, or have the properties taken down, and then we will reimburse them for their expenses.”

Local communities should respond to the survey by 5 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 6, 2023.

“We’re going to go through the process to do the inventory work and additional screening to add more communities for an expanded program,” Maguire said. “This is not a short term, one year kind of a deal. This could take millions of dollars over a number of years, but we’re off to an effective, good start and pretty excited.”

Legislators Hear About Funding For Flood Damage Reduction, Prevention

The West Virginia Legislature’s Joint Committee on Flooding met Tuesday morning to consider renewed funding to help mitigate flood damage in the southern part of the state.

Attorney Carl Fletcher of the Government Organization Committee reviewed two potential bills that would see $10 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds go towards the demolition of buildings destroyed by flood damage.

If passed, the bills would modify the state’s existing Abandoned and Dilapidated Properties Program to expressly include flood-damaged buildings.

“We just wanted to be doubly sure that it could include that, and that was the debate council had and staff had among itself whether we even needed the second bill, but we wanted to do that,” Fletcher said.

The program was initially created under the Department of Environmental Protection in 2021 with the passage of Senate Bill 368, with an initial $10 million in funding being granted under Senate Bill 722 in March earlier this year.

The committee plans to officially recognize the bills during their next meeting in January before the start of the legislative session.

Another topic introduced was the securing of renewed funding of streamgages installed across the state’s waterways. These devices measure water elevation and flow levels in rivers and help detect floods early on.

The state provided $820,000 of the total funding of streamgages in 2022, and it’s expected that state funding could increase to more than $876,000 in 2023, an increase of more than 4 percent. In 2024, the DEP is projecting another 5 percent increase putting funding needs at an estimated $940,000.

“Operational costs have increased. I mean, we see that in everyday life,” said DEP representative Jeremy White. “On our end, travel is expensive, the equipment itself is more expensive, repairs for equipment are more expensive. And in reality, salaries are also more expensive.”

Funding for streamgages became a line item in the state budget in fiscal year 2019, and they provide around a third of total funding alongside the United States Geological Survey and other federal, local and private organizations.

National Park Service Plans Demolition For Dilapidated Structures

The National Park Service (NPS) wants to demolish 16 structures in the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve.

The NPS says the structures are hazardous, non-historic and abandoned. Dilapidated, overgrown conditions create maintenance burdens and areas that are vulnerable to trespassing. They expect to save about $800,000 a year in maintenance and law enforcement costs. The project already has funding from the Great American Outdoors Act and the Legacy Restoration Fund.

The money is part of an effort to address the extensive maintenance backlog in National Parks.

The public is invited to attend an open house on Thursday Dec. 8 in Glen Jean from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Glen Jean Bank to learn more about the NPS plans.

NPS expects the demolition will also free up staff and financial resources for maintaining other facilities and resources that park visitors can use.

The structures/areas to be removed through this project are:

Ajax Mines Grounds (Items to be removed include large pipes, mechanical apparatus, and fences)
Ajax Pump Station Building
Billy Jo Adkins House
Burnwood Maintenance Storage Building
Burnwood Ranger Storage Building
Burnwood Ranger Storage Shed
Clarence Plumley House, Meadow Creek
Dun Glen Boat Storage/Emergency Cache (Constructed by NPS)
Glade Creek Restroom
Glenwood Corp River Road Cabins (Structures have been removed. Next phase work will include remediating old septic systems and revegetating area)
Grandview Resource Stewardship Office
Jonny and Brenda Adkins House
Julian Mark Richmond House
Julian Mark Richmond Shed
Samuel Ames Garage
Samuel Ames House

Courtesy

The National Park Service plans to demolish more structures like this on the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve.

Demolition could start as early as summer 2023. Additional information will be made available on the NPS’ planning website.

DEP Kicks Off Program To Remove Abandoned Structures

The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is set to remove abandoned structures throughout the state’s communities.

The new program was created by the West Virginia Legislature in 2021, with more than $9 million being assigned to it last March.

It officially kicked off Friday in Mercer County, with the first abandoned property in Mataoka being ceremoniously bulldozed.

Ed Maguire, the director of the Office of the Environmental Advocate for the DEP announced which communities would receive the funding during a live broadcast with Gov. Jim Justice’s office Friday afternoon.

Towns and counties included are:

Buckhannon
Clendenin
Elkins
Hinton
Mannington
Montgomery
Nitro
Oak Hill
Parkersburg
Parsons
Salem
Smithers
Thomas
Wellsburg
St. Albans
Princeton
Bluefield
Logan County
McDowell County

The project is set to take roughly one year. More communities are likely to be announced in a potential second phase.

Landbanks Address Abandoned Properties Problem

Abandoned properties are a major issue throughout the Mountain State, and some communities are utilizing landbank programs to address the problem.

Population decline and an over abundance of housing has left the Mountain State littered with abandoned homes, and communities are looking to solve the issue through landbank programs.

According to Huntington’s Fire Marshall, Mathew Winters, people who have moved away often inherit property from their parents. When the home becomes a financial burden the new owners are often unable to care for the home and they leave it to sit and rot.

Water damage is the biggest enemy of a home, and Winters noted that once the roof leaks, the water makes its way to the foundation. The added water damage changes how the building burns if it catches fire. He said abandoned properties are hazards where fires can spread to neighboring properties.

“Several years ago we had a fire in a vacant house that had only been vacant about six months,” Winters said. “The exposures on both sides caught fire. One of those exposures was a total loss and a very sweet lady lived there. She lived there 54 years and she lost everything because of that vacant property.”

Chrystal Perry is a demolition specialist for Huntington and a founding member of the West Virginia Abandoned Properties Coalition. She said abandoned properties are also a hazard to the first responders.

“If a property catches on fire, our first responders are going to go into that not knowing what a hazard lurks behind that door,” she said. “Do those first responders know that on that second floor there’s a gaping hole that they can fall in?”

Abandoned properties are also a danger to the people desperate enough to use them as a temporary shelter. Often, homeless people start fires in the building for warmth and in order to cook food.

“I got called to a fire. We were trying to figure out how in the world the fire started with no utilities,” Winters said. “Come to find out, they’d actually broken in through the crawlspace under the house, and cut a hole in the floor. Had they been in there when that fire started, their exit path was blocked.”

These hazards extend to West Virginia’s rural communities, where the majority of firefighters are volunteers.

Perry identified tax delinquency as a major contributor to Cabell County’s abandoned properties. Out-of-state investors often buy property through the county tax sale, and then neglect the property. These properties enter what Perry calls a “tax sale purgatory.”

“They would do a minimal amount of work, put a renter in it, and then when our code enforcement building inspectors got into the property, they would just flip that. They end up at a state tax sale, and by the time they get there, nobody wants them,” Perry said. “Then all that’s left is for the city to come in and spend thousands of dollars to remediate that problem.”

Perry and the West Virginia Abandoned Properties Coalition are part of a state wide push to rethink how communities approach abandoned properties.

One approach is landbanks. Landbanks are tools for communities to acquire tax delinquent properties, demolish the property when needed, and find new owners for the acquired property. Landbank legislation exists on the local and state levels across the country, but laws vary between states and local governments.

There are city wide landbanks such as Charleston Land Reuse Agency, county level landbanks like the one in Logan County, and the West Virginia Land Stewardship Corporation which acts on the state level.

“Now with the landbank, we have that tool if we can find that owner to donate that property to the city’s landbank and suddenly we can cut the grass, take care of the property, but most importantly we can find a new owner for that property,” Perry said, noting that the Huntington Landbank helps the city more effectively manage abandoned property.