Posts Tagged ‘lakewood’

Abandoned homes and ‘For Sale’ signs dotting the landscape send shivers down the community. Elected representative are humming and hawing about finding funds to fight the menace but others in the locality are not willing to buckle under without giving a fight.

Mayors in the Chicago region consisting of 272 members recently held a meeting and came up with viable suggestions like opening web sites to connect sufferers with licensed counselors. The local officials were looking at the problem from the angle of police and fire protection. How far that would get at the root of the problem is a moot question.

The problem has now taken on national jumbo proportions with 179,600 reporting of foreclosure filings in July. It is touching not only the dispossessed but also indirectly the entire area. Overgrown lawns, pending property taxes and other ills are penetrating each level of the socio-economic structure. The municipalities should see into the matter for sake of their own interests. The least the federal department concerned with housing and urban development can do is to connect the house owners with certified help agencies and hotlines.

In this matter the village hall has an important role. Psychologically the distressed will find it more comfortable to approach the latter rather than contact an impersonal faceless mortgage broker. According to a survey more than half the suffering house owners are in such a traumatic stage that they try to act like the proverbial ostrich burying their heads, hoping that the problem will disappear.

Help however is trickling through. Some non-profit groups are making use of public buildings to hold their seminars.

All the cases cannot be generalized. Each has a specific story to tell. For instance an individual invested in a number of houses in Lakewood Grove subdivision but already ten to fifteen of them have been abandoned. In other cases house owners let out the units on rent and then hiked up the rate as soon as lenders began to put the pressure. This led to the sudden eviction of many tenants. Houses became empty with piles of garbage on the front porch giving the entire community an off colour appearance.

The first thing is not to ignore the problem but to directly contact the lender. The latte does not want the house – but wants money. Respond to negotiations and be alert about legal pitfalls taking advice from proper quarters.

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Now well fare institutions like hospitals are coming under the cloud of foreclosures. St. Joseph Hospital on Fort Worth, near the south side, has been shut down. The New Jersey based owner says that more than $9000,000 as tax backlog, fines and interest will be paid before the property goes up for auction in the following month.

The Vice President of Diversified Capital, in Lakewood, New Jersey dealing with business development, said that although they are not happy and are grumbling, they would pay all the dues. But one thing for sure was that they were not going to surrender the property to foreclosure.

In May 2007, the ruling of the District Court judge was that SJG Partners, limited partners of Diversified Capital, is liable for the payment of taxes that have accrued since 2000. SJG Partners had purchased the property on South Main Street and Allen Avenue. It was a property under the hammer of the foreclosure. At that point of time, August 2005, the previous owners had failed to pay taxes to the tune of $695,000. As per the Sales Order issued by the office of the District Court the tax bill had shot up to $917,319. The date fixed for the auction is 7th August.

Diversified was sued by both Fort Worth, Tarrant County and Fort Worth School District in January last year (2006). Diversified answered that they did not owe taxes because they were not owners of the said property during the years the taxes had been accounted.

The property in dispute was the first hospital in Tarrant County. It was founded in 1885. It is a 12 storey structure made from red brick was added to the original structure and came to be called St. Joseph. It came to be owned by HCA/Columbia Healthcare Corporation when in 1995 it had to be closed.

Heritage Geriatric Housing Development of California bought the unit and redid the lower floors into Alzheimer’ Centre, St. Joseph’s Garden. It had to be closed in 2000.

Stern gave the information that Diversified has further ambitious plans. It is moving ahead to develop further the property with shops, offices and residential quarters that would be worth more than $50 million. He also added that recently there plans had been afoot to sell the property to a local oil and gas concern but the deal fell through.

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