TRENTON — The fates of 480 and 482 W. State St. are far from unusual in Trenton.

Abandoned 30 years ago, the two houses — one freestanding, one a row house, both less than a mile from the Statehouse — simply decayed to the point of no return.

Neighbors complained about their sagging porches and rotting roofs and raised alarms over the squatters and drug dealers who broke in and hung out inside.

In November, both were demolished by the city. A chain-link fence and patch of dirt have now replaced 480, a once-stately Queen Anne Victorian designed and built in 1891 for former Trenton mayor Daniel J. Bechtel, and 482, a row home built near the turn of the century.

“It’s a perennial issue,” said John Hatch, an architect, developer and member of the city’s Landmarks Commission for Historic Preservation. “The city has ended up getting more properties that have foreclosed and the city has money for demolition. Some from the state, some from federal sources, but the money is for demolition.”

Funding for stabilization or renovation of historic or abandoned properties has not kept pace with the amount available for demolition, Hatch said. And that means it’s often easier to tear down properties like 480 and 482 W. State St. — houses that were neglected, but still retained some historic or architectural significance — than wait for a deep-pocketed benefactor to come along and restore them to their former glory.

“My concern is I’ve lived in Trenton a long time,” Hatch said. “I’ve worked on a lot of redevelopment in Trenton. One of Trenton’s great assets is its historic building stock and neighborhoods. Especially with certain buildings, I see those get demolished and I feel it’s a great asset to the city that gets wasted. I’m trying to figure out a way that that happens less.”

Hatch and a group of preservationists, many on the Landmarks Commission, were too late to save 480 and 482 W. State. They tried writing letters to Mayor Tony Mack and appealing to the city’s inspections department to spare the houses — both of which were in the Fisher-Richey-Perdicaris Historic District and as such should have come before the Landmarks Commission for review before being razed.

But from the city administration’s perspective, the preservation effort was too little, too late, according to Hatch and Landmarks Commission member Stephanie Cherry-Farmer. City officials could not be reached for comment.

“What we have to do now is use these as a catalyst,” said Cherry-Farmer, the senior programs director at the nonprofit Preservation New Jersey.

The small group hopes to identify more historic or significant properties slated for demolition and figure out ways the city, state and local preservation community can restore or at least stabilize buildings before they are lost to the bulldozer.

“Our biggest goal is to make sure everybody’s considering there are options other than demolition,” Cherry-Farmer said. “Everyone needs to be more proactive about how we look at abandoned buildings. The longer they sit there, obviously the worse their conditions become and the bigger the problem it becomes for the community and the harder it is to move into an investor’s hands and get rehabilitated.”

The city owns close to 1,500 vacant or abandoned homes, some of which it has tried to unload, sometimes unsuccessfully, through public property auctions. Due to neglect and abandonment, many cannot be restored and become just another entry on the demolition list. In conjunction with this year’s list, the city received a $2.8 million grant to demolish abandoned and unsafe buildings from the state Department of Community Affairs.

Members of the Landmarks Commission are now dividing up that demo list and conducting spot inspections of each property to see if any are historic in nature or worth saving.

“If the money that the state provides to cities for demolition comes with either separate money that could be used for stabilization or the demolition money could be more flexible, these cities could make those dollars go farther,” Hatch said. “You can spend $3,000 to fix a roof; you don’t have to spend $25,000 or $30,000 in five years to demolish it.”

Preservationists realize the city is short on both time and money and has the added responsibility of making sure abandoned properties do not become hazards or neighborhood eyesores. The Trenton Historic Society gives grants each year to repair historic homes, but the pot of money only goes so far.

“If I had my druthers, I’d redo all of them,” Hatch said. “But it does need more money than the Trenton Historic Society has. The state, federal and city money has to be flexible so that the inspections department isn’t faced with the tough choice that at some point they have to demolish.”

In a meeting with inspections department director Cleveland Thompson last month, Cherry-Farmer said the official was frank about the challenges the city faces with its overstock of abandoned buildings.

“He was open in admitting that they do have a lot on their plate with staffing shortages and a lot of abandoned properties to deal with, but they were willing to meet with us and willing to open that door to say here’s the list, here’s the properties that are of concern,” Cherry-Farmer said.

Thompson could not be reached for comment.

The hurdles aren’t small, but Cherry-Farmer said that by working together, volunteers and city staff can try to raise money or find grants to patch up roofs to slow water damage and board up houses to keep out squatters, in the hope that one day someone might renovate a property and get it back on the city’s tax rolls.

The Preservation NJ website has a page dedicated to marketing historic houses and fixer-uppers to potential buyers, and preservationists continue to lobby for a state historic home tax credit program that would give individuals or companies a tax break for rehabilitating a historic property, up to 25 percent of the project’s costs.

A bill establishing the credit was co-sponsored by Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D-Trenton) but was vetoed last year by Gov. Chris Christie.

“It’s an excellent opportunity for the state to create an economic engine and save our history at the same time,” Gusciora said.

Contact Erin Duffy at (609) 989-5723 or eduffy@njtimes.com.