Clayton uses captive crews for foreclosure cleanup

By Tammy Joyner

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

For more than a year, Frank Heiselman watched the vacant house next door slowly disappear behind a thicket of four-foot-high weeds and grass.

But recently, that eyesore of Chase Woods subdivision became the showpiece of the Jonesboro neighborhood, courtesy of a new Clayton County program and an unusual crew of landscapers. An hour after arriving, a dozen county jail inmates had transformed the yard in a flurry of mowing, raking, trimming and debris removal. And for good measure, they tidied up Heiselman’s driveway with a leaf blower when they were done.

“I really appreciate them coming out,” said Heiselman, who has lived in the neighborhood 28 years.

Many counties and cities use inmates to keep roads clean, but Clayton County is believed to be a pioneer in using prisoners to tackle its part of one of the nation’s biggest environmental headaches and cleanup jobs these days: foreclosed homes and abandoned properties.

"I haven't heard of other places locally or nationally doing that," said Dan Immergluck, associate professor in the School of City and Regional Planning at Georgia Tech. Immergluck has studied the effects of foreclosures on communities nationwide.

Clayton averages about 1,000 foreclosure proceedings a month and half of them wind up becoming a problem for code enforcers. Despite county efforts,  many owners and banks aren’t taking care of the foreclosed properties, said Lt. Ken Waits, Clayton’s assistant code enforcement commander. The biggest offenders are the banks, Waits said.

County authorities were running out of money and patience dealing with the growing number of foreclosed homes in need of cleanup or repair.

In response, county commissioners recently approved the plan to use inmates instead of private contractors. It’s expected to save the county almost $250,000 a year, the amount Clayton taxpayers were paying to have private companies do the cleanup. That money, which was budgeted annually, now goes back into the county's general fund.

“We could stay in court trying to get banks and owners (to pay),” said commissioner Sonna Singleton. “(Instead) we came up with the idea of using inmates. We had to find a way to deal with the problem without spending so much of the taxpayers' money.”

The estimated $1,000 bill for the Chase Woods work will be attached to the owner's tax bill, which is due next month. In the past, the county would have sent a larger bill -- reflecting a private company's costs -- to the errant owner or bank and the collection rate was "very, very poor" at about 20 percent, Singleton said.

The county has created a fee schedule for the cleanup. The only costs to the county are for the use of additional corrections officers overseeing the work and any necessary equipment, Singleton said. She said the lien system, which is new for Clayton's foreclosure problem, should help with collections.

“We will get our money,” Singleton said.

Immergluck said he's interested in seeing how well Clayton's system works.

"The real problem is being able to collect the cost. Atlanta has had a mixed record collecting on liens," he noted.  He cited DeKalb County's recent passage of an ordinance intended to force lenders to maintain foreclosed property to certain standards or face stiff penalties.

"We need more local ordinances like DeKalb's and we need to make sure the state allows local ordinances to be enforced," he said. "Localities need to be able to put liens on (properties) and enforce them. If you have strong liens, it basically threatens the owner with losing the property."

"In most places in metro Atlanta, you can own a rental property and not take care of it and nothing's going to happen to you. If you're a bank, it's kind of the same way. "

Immergluck said his research has shown that foreclosures bring down the value of  surrounding properties. He noted that addressing the problem involves more than "cutting the grass."

"Some localities have been proactive," he said. Cleveland, for instance, requires foreclosures to be securely boarded-up and Minneapolis residents must use aesthetically pleasing plywood to board up abandoned property. Chicago requires metal security instead of wood, to create a better deterrent for gangs and drug dealers.

Immergluck said he questions the use of  inmates to clean up foreclosed and abandoned  properties instead of public land.

"If they're using prisoners, they're diverting them to do private work rather than public parks," he said.

So far, the county is chipping away at its foreclosure problem, scratching off about 60 homes from its to-do list that includes  390 homes and continues to grow.

The stark transformation on Park Lane in Chase Woods caught neighbors Sandra Herrington and Renae Brown off guard as they drove by.  Herrington remembers being afraid to approach the house earlier this year when she was making her rounds as a census taker.

“It looked awful. It was really dangerous,” Herrington said. “There were so many spider webs and (overgrown) hedges.  Last week, she and Brown stood looking at the house in amazement.

“It looks excellent. So now at least if somebody gets lost coming to my house I won’t be ashamed,” she said.

Brown, who was recently fined by code enforcement for having a car parked on her lawn, said the program was "well past due" but still doesn't address the broader problems homeowners are facing in these tough economic times.

"They need to come up with a way for people to stay in their houses and fix their houses," she said.