Ten vacant or abandoned properties line a block along Mt. Prospect Avenue, residents who live there say they're fed up with the problem and trying to leave.
NEWARK -- Along a one-block stretch on Mt. Prospect Avenue, the unkept corners of homes hang loose. Windows are boarded up with crumbling plywood. Empty liquor bottles, a child's blue plastic chair and cigarettes collect along the sidewalks.
John Gutierrez stands in front of his pristine multi-family white home on a recent afternoon, looks down his street and sighs. "We can't take this anymore," he says in Spanish.
There are 10 boarded up and empty homes here, wedged between Bloomfield and Park Avenues.
Gutierrez, 53, said many of the homes have been abandoned for years but the consequences are growing unbearable. The houses have become raucous drug dens, a few had sewer problems and stank up the block in the dead of summer. The house next to Gutierrez's has become a gathering place for people to drink, dump trash and make noise at all hours of the night.
"This isn't a place to have a family," Gutierrez, who lives with his wife and 13-year-old daughter said. He's trying to sell his house and leave.
Abandoned and vacant homes are a headache for cities across the country and not just in urban centers like Newark. But it's aggravating longtime homeowners who say the city needs to do more to fix the problem and protect those who want to remain in Newark.
According to Newark's abandoned property registry, there are more than 2,000 abandoned or vacant properties in the city. Properties with no legal occupants for six months are considered vacant; those in need rehabilitation, behind on property taxes or threatening community safety are defined as abandoned.
In 2011, the city passed a vacant property ordinance, requiring owners of vacant properties to register and pay escalating fees every year as an incentive for landlords to fix the property or sell it. The city also adopted an abandoned property ordinance and out-of-state creditor laws that allow it to take control of the property through eminent domain and fine out-of-state creditors who own abandoned properties $2,500 per violation per day.
"What these laws have done is that they've empowered these cities and cities that take advantage of them to make code enforcement a pro-active activity," said Raphael Kasen, community building specialist for the Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey.
He said 200 municipalities have passed vacant property registration ordinances, 80 have enabled the Abandoned Properties Rehabilitation Act and 136 have creditor laws. But it's up to cities to make sure such rules are enforced.
"We hate to lose good property owners," said North Ward Councilman Anibal Ramos. He said he understands the concerns coming from longtime residents and requested several properties along Mt. Prospect be included in the city's abandoned properties list.
"It's hard for the city to track down who really owns this. They're owned by these banks or mortgage entities," Ramos said. "It's a constant battle, they board them up and people sneak into these properties."
Baye Adofo-Wilson, Deputy Mayor for Economic and Housing Development, whose department oversees the registration of vacant/abandoned properties said they work with code enforcement to tackle the problem.
"The city collects fees every week, we're on top of that," he said. "The challenge is for the city is to find the resources to do the acquisitions for abandoned properties ... the city has to buy it, we do an appraisal and the city has to pay for it."
The city is also looking to beef up its code enforcement and hire an additional 15 officers, Ramos said. The department currently has 12 code enforcement officers, down from 40 in 2010.
'This is devastating'
For a few hours on a cloudy day in May, volunteers dressed in bright yellow T-shirts filled this same block for a community clean up day. They picked up old bottles, boxes, broken glass and cardboard boxes -- filling at least 60 bags of trash.
The cleaning was one of several organized this summer by the Homeowners and Merchants Association of North Newark, along with Ramos, City Council member Luis Quintana and Mayor Ras Baraka.
But days after the block party, the throngs of volunteers were gone, the trash had piled up again and neighbors complained that those breaking into the boarded up properties were continuing to dump garbage -- including bathroom remains.
"They put nasty stuff at the front of the house," Kwaku Darko, 20, who lives next to another empty property, said last month. "Over there they don't have bathroom, they don't have water. Sometimes they come to our house for water."
"I feel bad most of the time. My brother or my mother don't want to sit at the front of the house, they don't want to live there," said Darko. "You have little kids so that is no good for them."
Residents said they need longer term clean up efforts targetting vacant properties.
A few doors down Francisco Martinez was fixing his house -- after 18 years, he says he's selling it.
"If I could live peacefully, I would stay," Martinez, 60, said in Spanish. "It's unbearable, that's what's forcing us to leave. As homeowners, everything goes up, taxes, the cost of living, but we don't have the protection and help needed. The street belongs to the delinquents."
Martinez said police don't respond when neighbors complain about people gathering inside and around vacant properties.
"This is devastating, no one helps," he said.
"We try the best we can. We don't have enough resource to alleviate," said Newark Detective Joseph Bernal, who helped coordinate the May street cleaning. "It's unfortunate. The city is trying to do anything they can."
Fixing the problem
In New Jersey, 1.5 percent of all homes are vacant, according to 2016 data from RealtyTrac. That means there are 38,428 vacant homes out of 2.6 million residential properties.
"Unfortunately, we'll continue to see this problem," Kasen said. "We have the highest foreclosure rate in the country. As long we maintain that foreclosure rate, you're going to see significant number of abandoned properties."
Raymond Ocasio, executive director of La Casa de Don Pedro, said there's not enough federal subsidies to encourage nonprofit groups to buy up abandoned homes and rehabilitate them for residents at affordable prices.
"At the highest level, the feds are not looking at the issue. (The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) is being cut back ... they have less resources to manage or repair or replace."
La Casa de Don Pedro sits at the corner of Mt. Prospect and Park Avenue.
"I wish there was a program or a magic bullet that would solve all the problems," said Louis Prezeau, director of community and economic development for La Casa. He said residents complain of vermin, illegal dumping and drug dealing. "I don't know the answer, it's frustrating."
He said it's a question many major cities are facing after decades of disinvestment.
"Enforcement is difficult, we have to have greater transparency on the owners," Ocasio added. "If you don't know where the owners are, if you're sending notices to the owners that have no response, it's a problem lots of us are confronted with but I don't think we have many of the answers because it's huge."
Gutierrez has lived in his home for 16 years. He wants to leave but doesn't make enough money to be able to afford a place elsewhere.
He worries the abandoned home next door, already listed on the city's registry, puts his family in danger. The two other families who rent from him have also considered leaving.
"Every day it's worse, we're desperate," he said. "We feel abandoned."
'I use the law'
Housing advocates point to East Orange as a leader in tackling abandoned properties. In the last three years, the city has raked in $3.2 million in abandoned property registration fees and violations which has helped pay for the abandoned/vacant properties division and some of its staff.
"Code enforcement is the driver of change in a community and a lot of code enforcement people don't understand that," said Dwight Saunders, East Orange's director of property maintenance and code enforcement. "It changes the dynamic in the community and it makes people want to invest here."
Of the city's 1,027 vacant/abandoned properties, he said 800 are being responsive to city-issued violations. He said he works with public works, fire, police and animal control to clean up entire blocks at a time.
"It's been a battle, because once we run them out here, they move to another house," he said of squatters who take residence in abandoned homes. "You have to be aggressive and implement your plan."
Saunders said cities have to be persistant in tracking down property owners and making sure the city stands up to their lawyers in court.
"I use the law," he said. "This is what you have to do."
Karen Yi may be reached at kyi@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter at @karen_yi or on Facebook.
