ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2013 Allentown City Council voted Wednesday night to adopt an ordinance that will allow the administration to maintain a list of vacant properties in the city.<\/p>\n
Heidi Westerman, director of building standards and safety, explained the city wanted to develop an actual list of vacant properties in the city.<\/p>\n
The purpose of the registration program will serve as a means to protect neighborhoods from becoming blighted due to a lack of maintenance and security.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have in the past required an at-risk registration, which doesn’t tell us exactly what properties are vacant, so oftentimes our emergency personnel were going into the buildings, and we don’t know if they’re vacant or if they should be vacant,\u201d Westerman said.<\/p>\n
Vicky Kistler, director of community and economic development, said the city has had first responders entering properties that have been vacant for an extended period of time and finding hazardous materials.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’ve also had responders spending significant time in vacant properties looking for occupants, only to learn later that there haven’t been occupants for years,\u201d Kistler said. \u201cSo that’s one of our concerns. The second concern is that vacant properties in a neighborhood, lower property values for all our neighbors that live there.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe registry will hopefully allow us to share that information among our first responders if they are responding to a property,\u201d Kistler added, \u201cBut also to help us get a handle on where we do have occupants and we need to respond perhaps in a different way.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Westerman said the city knows about properties that were in foreclosure, but because those circumstances change, those properties are not always vacant.<\/p>\n
The registration will require a fee of $150 for residential and $300 for residential properties that will be vacant for more than 90 days.<\/p>\n
But Westerman said there will be situations where the fee will not be required, such as for property owners selling a property who have completed a pre-sale inspection.<\/p>\n
The city will still ask property owners to register in those situations.<\/p>\n
Council President Santo Napoli said that ultimately it\u2019s about the spirit of the ordinance and what the city is trying to accomplish.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s really about just holding vacant property owners accountable and just making sure that these vacant properties are not affecting their neighbors,\u201d Napoli said. \u201cWe hear stories at council all the time about a vacant property causing damage to a next-door homeowner’s property. I think it’s really important to get eyes on these properties to understand the issues.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe vacant properties ultimately are the next generation of blighted properties,\u201d Napoli added. \u201cI don’t want to tag all vacant properties together, but I believe there are vacant properties that when left vacant for a decade become the next blighted properties.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2013 Allentown City Council voted Wednesday night to adopt an ordinance that will allow the administration…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185949,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,6156,104662,104661,14932,104663,98718],"class_list":["post-244443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-blighted-properties","tag-director-of-building-standards-and-safety","tag-heidi-westerman","tag-santo-napoli","tag-vacant-property-registration","tag-vicky-kistler"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}