'Blight' label opens door to mischief by municipalities
Apr. 29, 2006 12:00 AM
Debbie Richards and her daughter, Katie, live in a little yellow house on Ocotillo Road in Queen Creek.
As houses go, it's a modest affair, not exactly one of those Tuscan mini-mansions in Scottsdale. But the roof is new and the kitchen, too, and there's a yard for her daughter to play in. And most of all, it's hers.
For now. The town of Queen Creek has declared that Richards' house and others in the area are a blight on the town. A blight. It's a tag that could open the way for the town to condemn her home and turn it over to a developer to transform into something grander, or at least more lucrative, than a little yellow house.
Queen Creek officials swear that's not their plan, and they point to a resolution by the Town Council that says so.
But, the fact is, they could. Which was enough to send Tim Keller to the Capitol.
Keller is the local head of the Institute for Justice, the non-profit law firm that came to the aid of Randy Bailey when Mesa officials decided they'd prefer to have a hardware store where Bailey's Brake Shop stands.
The Institute for Justice won that battle in the courts, and no longer are cities allowed to take a man's property simply because they prefer hardware to brake jobs. Now, in order to seize your land, they have to find that it's a slum or a blight on the landscape, or even just that it's near a slum or a blight on the landscape.
Looking at Richards' house, it's difficult to see how Queen Creek could find it to be blighted. In late 2004, the town helped her secure a $33,000 grant to renovate the place. "Literally top to bottom, side to side," she says, proudly. "New roof, new AC, new heat pump, new duct work, new electrical, new plumbing, new kitchen, new bathrooms, new flooring, painted, (energy efficient) windows all the way around, new steel front doors. Everything new."
Ten months later, the town declared her house a blight.
John Kross, assistant town manager, says the Town Council declared the square mile area in the center of town a redevelopment zone to qualify for federal funding for property improvements, not to condemn houses for commercial development.
That, however, wouldn't stop the town from condemning the land for blight, which would be a public purpose, then turning it over to a developer, Keller says.
Which sounds fair. Who, after all, wants to live in a slum or look at blight?
Ah, but it's all in how you define it. In Arizona, it was left to the Legislature (with a little help from the cities) to define blight three years ago. Your neighborhood could be declared blighted if there is an "inadequate street layout" or if there's a "diversity of ownership" or a "faulty lot layout."
Keller wants to narrow the definition so that a house has to actually be a slum to be declared a slum: unsafe or unhealthy, not just unattractive to the guys at city hall.
House Bill 2675 sailed through the House and won tentative approval in the Senate. But now it's being held up, Keller said, because of opposition from the cities.
Several lobbyists for cities didn't return calls to explain why a house such as Richards' should be considered a blight.
As for Richards, she's sure the town is out to erase her neighborhood. Meanwhile, she's stuck with the blight label, not exactly a boon to property values.
"It's going to be commercial, no doubt about it," she says. "The question is, who's going to realize the profit from the real estate?"
Do you even need to ask?
Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8635. Read her blog at robertsblog.azcentral.com.