It was 1953 when the Webb family felt the call of opportunity and left southern climes for work in Minnesota.

A three-story, 1890s-house on St. Paul’s Carroll Avenue offered ample room for everyone, and even construction of Interstate 94, which uprooted so many of their friends and neighbors in the 1960s, somehow avoided their corner lot in Old Rondo.

Gaynelle Webb Buckland, her parents’ only child, moved out of the house when she married in 1986, leaving the house to her aunt Fannie Mae Webb. In December 2018, Buckland discovered that her aunt, then approaching 90, needed to move into an assisted-living facility.

Buckland, who lives in Bloomington, has regained ownership of the house through a quit-claim deed. She admits there’s a laundry list of problems, from a sagging support beam to faulty heating. The city of St. Paul condemned the property, and Buckland — who hopes to sell it this month — can see why.

What strikes her as less reasonable is the nearly $2,300 in “registered vacant building” and administrative fees she’s forced to pay the city this year, an added financial burden on top of her already costly situation.

“It weighs on you,” said Buckland, after attempting to appeal the fee to the St. Paul City Council on Jan. 15, without success. “In the meantime, you’re still dealing with utilities. I’m heading there to go shovel.”

City council members expressed sympathy but noted that the house had been empty for a year and she could recoup the funds through a sale in the works.

In total, the city assessed Buckland $2,127 for maintaining a vacant residential property, $122 through a St. Paul Department of Safety and Inspections administrative fee, and $35 for real estate administration.

INTENDED TO ENCOURAGE FILLING VACANT PROPERTIES

St. Paul’s vacant building fees are intended to encourage property owners — especially out-of-town banks and investors — to fill empty homes as quickly as possible, rather than allowing houses to be taken over by squatters or fall into disrepair.

They’re also a way to recoup municipal costs associated with vacant property, such as fire inspections and police visits.

And they discourage landlords from assuming they’ll be able to duck the responsibilities that come with homeownership in St. Paul, such as clearing snow from sidewalks and alleys.

Critics, however, say the fees can pose an unintended hardship on moderate-income families, one of the city’s largest populations.

A disproportionate number of the nearly 500 residential properties on the city’s registered vacant property list are on the East Side or in low-income areas such as Frogtown, Summit-University and the North End.

At a time when local and national leaders are focused on rising rents in growing metro areas and a shortage of affordable housing, some market advocates feel more could be done to get the hundreds of residential properties on St. Paul’s vacant housing list into the hands of homebuyers faster, and at a lower cost.

“On occasion, I would like to have the flexibility to allow the fees to be applied to code-compliance repairs,” said St. Paul City Council member Jane Prince, who represents Dayton’s Bluff and the lower East Side, areas with a relatively large amount of vacant property.

FEES CAN ADD UP

City fees can add up at a time when families are struggling to get old homes ready for market, and they may even increase housing costs if the owners attempt to recoup the fees by folding them into the sales price.

In the event a vacant property is sold, the new owner has 30 days to pay any delinquent vacant building fees with the city. In 2018, the city of St. Paul charged owners of 642 vacant properties $1.37 million in registration fees, and owners paid about a third of that ($445,000) directly to the Department of Safety and Inspections.

Travis Bistodeau, deputy director of DSI, said unpaid fees are sometimes waived by the city council or placed on a special property tax assessment, though the department did not have details available on how often either outcome was the case. The city can also recoup some but not all of the assessed fees from tax-forfeited properties.

And as the city population ages, more residents may find themselves in the same situation as Buckland: inheriting properties that are costly to maintain, even when they’re empty.

“The St. Paul Area Association of Realtors has worked for years to reduce the impact of vacant building fees on homeowners like Ms. Buckland,” said association president Patrick Ruble, in a written statement. “We believe that returning vacant and abandoned buildings to occupied status is an essential element to solving our current housing crisis.”

POOR NEIGHBORHOODS HAVE THE MOST VACANCIES

Some property owners, however, want to see vacant building fees climb higher, with possible waivers for owners who agree to fix up long-vacant properties.

The fees were last increased 2 percent in 2017.

“If it were up to me, we’d be moving that up substantially, and a commercial fee would be different than a house,” said North End advocate Rich Holst. “I think they’re too low.”

Holst, a residential landlord who sits on the board of the North End Neighborhood Organization, can point to 842 Rice St. as an example of a commercial property that has changed hands multiple times over the years without occupancy.

A Caron-Fabre furniture store for 40 years, the three-story Victorian commercial building was once a tavern, a sheet metal shop and a secondhand store, according to Historic St. Paul.

It’s been officially vacant since 2010.

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The vacant registered building fee is “nothing,” Holst said. “It doesn’t incentivize development. In my opinion, it’s probably not strong enough. On the flip side, if you make the fee too high, a building will be knocked down and probably just end up as another North End vacant lot.”

NUMBER OF REGISTERED VACANT PROPERTIES ON THE DECLINE

On a bright note, the number of official registered vacant properties in St. Paul has declined precipitously from a high of nearly 2,000 properties in 2009, during peak foreclosure years when a recession-era housing crisis left entire city blocks near-vacant.

Nevertheless, nearly 500 properties still dot the city’s official list of vacant properties, and at least 90 percent of them are residential.

That includes 326 single-family homes, 81 duplexes, 65 commercial buildings, 16 multi-family apartment buildings and seven mixed-use buildings, according to the city’s vacant building registry.

Nearly two-thirds of the properties are labeled “Category 2” buildings, meaning they’ve shown multiple serious code violations and the city requires proof that a buyer or seller will complete necessary repairs before the building is sold.

Only 31 buildings are labeled “Category 3,” which are officially designated “dangerous structures” and most likely have been condemned.

The properties tend to be spread across the city’s seven political wards, with heavier concentrations in poorer neighborhoods. Ward 3 (Macalester-Groveland and Highland Park) has the fewest, with just 23 registered vacant buildings, and Ward 1 (Frogtown, Summit-University and some neighboring areas) has the most at 105 properties.

The city’s two East Side wards had about 90 to 95 registered vacant properties apiece, roughly double the 50 vacant properties in Ward 4, which spans Hamline-Midway, St. Anthony Park and the city’s western border with Minneapolis.

MINNEAPOLIS CHARGES $7,000. BLOOMINGTON? NOTHING

Suzanne Donovan, a spokeswoman for the St. Paul Department of Safety and Inspections, said St. Paul isn’t unique in charging a registered vacant building fee.

“Many Minnesota cities have vacant building ordinances — Minneapolis, Richfield, Hopkins to name just a few,” Donovan said. “Since St. Paul created its ordinance, several cities have called for information to follow the city’s lead.”

In Minneapolis, the annual vacant building registration fee is $7,087, though it can be waived with a written restoration agreement.

In 2018, Minneapolis billed owners $2.7 million in vacant building fees but received $1.5 million. The city waived $1.14 million, leaving $70,000 pending to be collected.

The West St. Paul City Council has repeatedly looked into assessing a vacant building fee but chose not to. It recently added a second code-compliance officer instead.

“It comes up every two years, once it’s a new council,” said Jim Hartshorn, community and economic-development director for West St. Paul, who maintains an informal list of long-term vacant properties.

“We got rid of the worst of the worst. I have maybe half a dozen,” Hartshorn said. “Business is really good. 2019 is one of the best years we’ve ever had. We don’t even have half the vacancies we had three years ago.”

Bloomington and Maplewood also forgo official registries, leaving the work of tracking vacant properties to their code-enforcement officials.

“Maplewood does not require vacant buildings be registered nor does the city maintain an official list of vacancies,” said Michael Martin, assistant community-development director for the city of Maplewood, who said vacancy issues “have not affected Maplewood to the point where we have needed to take any steps toward creating a registry.”

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St. Paul man threatened another man with a sword, charges say In St. Paul, most registered vacant properties had been on the city’s registered vacant building list for little more than a year or two, though 60 buildings date back at least a decade, having first been registered between 1995 and 2010.

The city maintains a full list online at tinyurl.com/VacantSTP, and interactive maps that group properties by ward, time spent vacant or property type at tinyurl.com/vacantSTPData.