By Michele Deluca
Niagara Gazette
NIAGARA FALLS —
"Hey, get that lawnmower going today, it’s getting a little high,” Gail Licht told a neighbor the other day, pointing to his front lawn as she watched him get into his car.
He looked at her sheepishly and smiled, “OK.”
Apparently, it’s important to be tough and a little demanding if you live in a neighborhood dotted with vacant houses but still care deeply about the street where you live.
Licht is not afraid to speak her mind. To her, it’s more important that her neighborhood look decent than for her to win any popularity contest.
She and her husband of 25 years, Mike Licht, have a nicely kept home on Elmwood Avenue. There is white wicker furniture on the porch, which is decked with flowers. There is a swimming pool in the back yard. Also in the yard, baring his teeth, is a large German Shepherd named Baron, watching over the couple’s property.
Across the street from the nicely kept home, neighbors Judy Gunzelman and Leo Trane have a trim, well kept cottage-style home that Leo grew up in. No one lives in the houses on either side of them.
The empty houses, one of which was recently invaded by copper pipe thieves who were caught when Trane called the police, are symbols of urban decay that threaten neighbors trying to hold their communities together.
Mayor Paul Dyster called abandoned houses the most important issue the city faces.
“I don’t think we have any more challenging problem in the City of Niagara Falls than vacant houses,” he said recently.
The mayor noted that the population decline responsible for the empty homes is a problem being faced by many northeast cities and he is watching how others, such as Youngstown and Detroit, are tackling the problem.
Detroit is condensing neighborhoods by relocating people. Youngstown is tearing up blighted spaces and converting entire blocks into greenspaces.
Dyster said he is also watching the state Legislature which is working on a bill to allow a city to take control of abandoned properties sooner, rather than go through a lengthy process that can take three years before an empty house can be demolished.
Those who live in the neighborhoods where the abandoned houses thwart efforts to keep their homes attractive, clean and safe, sometimes give up and move to better neighborhoods. Sometimes, they choose to stay and fight for the homes they care deeply about.
Gunzelman and her boyfriend maintain the abandoned properties on either side of their Elmwood Avenue home. Trane mows his own lawn, then he mows the vacant lot next door, and then he mows the lawn of the condemned house on his other side. In the winter, he snow plows the three properties and often plows the whole street. A neighbor on 15th street helps him maintain the vacant house on the corner. Sometimes Trane and Gunzelman feel like they’re fighting a losing battle.
“You get fed up after a while,” Gunzelman said. She said she has called city hall several times about the tall bushes in front of the houses on both sides of her home. She’s also called about getting the corner house boarded up after it was broken into. The city has been trying to accommodate her, but recently the tall bushes stood in front of the vacant properties, providing places for criminals to hide on both sides of her home.
Frustration is evident in Gunzelman’s voice when she says, “We can’t even move because who is going to buy our house?”
The city is investing more money than ever before in demolitions, according to Dennis Virtuoso, director of code enforcement for the city. “The city council and the mayor have been very generous,” he said of the funds provided for demolition, about $1.6 million this year. The city has been demolishing about 60 structures per year for about the last three years, he added.
Virtuoso said it’s hard for his department to be proactive because it is so understaffed.
“We need more inspectors,” he said, noting there are currently only three inspectors in his department in a city that has about 52,000 residents. Lockport, which has about 20,000 residents, has five inspectors.
The council has provided the funds for one more inspector, but Virtuoso said he has been unable to find someone qualified to take the position.
Virtuoso said he is not exactly sure how many abandoned houses there are in the city, but would welcome some help from area college students to canvas the city and determine where abandoned houses are posing a problem.
In the meantime, he advised that residents contact the city about houses that are vacant or abandoned and unkempt.
“There’s nothing in the law that says you can’t have a vacant house if you keep the outside painted and the grass cut,” he said. “But, if you turn off the water and turn off the electric, then we’ve got to condemn it because nobody can live there without (electric and) water.”
In the meantime, the house on one side of Judy Gunzelman, at 1508 Elmwood, has been condemned. The lengthy process will now begin to get the owner to comply with city housing codes.
Neighbors say the owner hasn’t been to the property since he bought it about ten years ago, so they’ll be interested to see what happens. The inspections department has no record of any calls on the empty corner house at Elmwood Avenue and 15th Street.
“If they take them down I’m sure the homeowners would love to take over the lots,” said Mike Licht.
That’s actually one of the solutions the mayor and his administration are looking at, along with creating more community gardens, parks and agricultural plots. Dyster said he has also met twice with the director of Buffalo ReUse which recycles the wood and fixtures from carefully demolished homes and resells them in a non-profit store. The non-profit provides job training and employment in the inner city of Buffalo.
Dyster’s plans for success may depend on toughness and fortitude of the neighbors who live in nicely kept homes among the abandoned properties.
“I’m not going nowhere. They aren’t moving me out,” said Gail Licht.
Her husband Mike, his face set stubbornly adds, “This is my home, I’ll take care of it.”
Contact reporter Michele DeLuca
at 282-2311, ext. 2263.
