SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Dec. 13, 2022 (Gephardt Daily) — Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall announced Tuesday that four unsafe buildings in the city’s Ballpark neighborhood, at least two of which have recently caught fire, will be demolished at the owners’ expense.
The houses, which are condemned and do not meet city codes, have the same owners.
“It goes back years,” Mendenhall said at a news conference. “This is years of egregious states of disrepair in all four buildings, years of dilapidation and unsafe conditions. And they have continued to prevail despite the city’s best efforts led by our fire department, our civil enforcement, building division and others and our police department to try to have the property owners come into code compliance.”
Because of a lack of action from the absentee homeowner, “Our civil enforcement team began imposing daily fines on the owner of these buildings, due to the instability of the structures and threat of fires, the actuality of fires and the threat that they pose to the general public,” the mayor said.
“In that one year of time, these fines are now just touching $50,000 in total, across all four properties. As a city, we respect the rights of property owners. So the bar for us taking this unprecedented action is set very high. The remedies, the many, many remedies that we’ve attempted to make as a city have gone unanswered. But the safety issues of these properties and the threat that they’ve posed in their vacancy are unacceptable, and they end now.”
Mendenhall said an emergency order for demolition was sent to the owner of the properties Tuesday morning.
“It carries a 10-day period where the owner may themselves hire for the demolition of the properties. But if they don’t demolish by the end of these 10 days, the city will demolish the properties and then the owners will be held liable for all of the costs.
“So in short, if these structures which have for too long posed a liability to our neighborhood, are not gone by Dec. 23, the city will take the action it needs to in order to keep this neighborhood safe.”
Salt Lake City Fire crews have responded to recent fires in the 1300 south block of Major Street on Dec. 10, Dec. 2, Nov. 29 and Nov. 28.
Danger from houses
Amy J. Hawkins, Ballpark neighborhood resident and Ballpark Community Council chair, agrees the properties should come down.
“We need a policy solution that doesn’t require five fires in two weeks and a community campaign,” she told Gephardt Daily. “There have been serious problems at these properties for a long, long time. The fires were just the most visible.”
Hawkins said Salt Lake City Civil enforcement currently monitors 172 boarded properties, and “These four are the worst. If we’re so lucky to see these four demo’ed, there will be a next four. Maybe those next four won’t be in Ballpark, maybe they’ll be in Glendale, or Fairpark. But no neighborhood in the city should have to put up with this.”
The houses aren’t just dangerous to surrounding houses and businesses, she said.
“These were dangerous for the unsheltered folks and people experiencing mental health crisis who would break into them. They were unsafe for our city’s public safety personnel, because when buildings go through repeated cycles of burning and being boarded up, they become very structurally unsound. Being asked to go into these buildings to potentially save people puts everyone at risk over and over.”
Just a start
Homeowner Dan Thomas, who lives across from one of the houses to be demolished, told Gephardt Daily he went to the mayor’s news conference and thanked her afterward.
“I shook the mayor’s hand and said thank you for the first time because I thought I thought today she earned it. Up to this point, I’ve been very displeased with her actions. I feel like these houses need to come down. They’re an immediate danger to the neighborhood.”
Thomas, an attorney in his 10th year as a Ballpark neighborhood resident, said a big question for him is what happens to the properties next.
The fact that the houses will be gone may allow the owners to build something like storage units, which has been suggested, at lower expense, he said. The demolition may give owners a loophole around a city code that requires they pay a hefty fine for removing housing and replacing it with structures that provide no housing.
“So with that in mind, some people in the neighborhood have speculated that this is in the favor of the owners because it saves them a million dollars or so of fees that are associated with removing housing,” Thomas said.
Before they were condemned, the houses’ “prior use would probably be best described as flop houses that were overcrowded with people that were there for the purpose of using and accessing drug,” Thomas said.
And storage units could draw criminal activity to the neighborhood, he said.
“So the next question would be with these houses removed, is it going to also remove that checkpoint where there’s public feedback before the owners move forward, and potentially replace it with something that could be harmful to the neighborhood?”
Thomas stressed he is making no allegations against the owners, and does not know their intent or motives regarding the properties.
Still, he’s happy to see what could be a step forward in improving life in the Ballpark neighborhood.
“I’ve seen a lot of terrible things happen right here, firsthand. I’ve watched a number of SWAT team raids, shootings, stabbings, tons of drug dealing, drug use, domestic violence, fights, fights with deadly weapons. It’s been a horror show.”
