As city staff members deploy the wrecking ball to bring down some of Burlington’s uninhabited homes, one city council member has rolled out a few ideas of his own to deal with other long desolate dwellings.
During a regularly-scheduled council meeting on Tuesday, councilman Ian Baltutis floated five different proposals for his colleagues to take under advisement as they grasp for new ways to improve the city’s housing stock.
Baltutis, who is also currently the Democratic contender for North Carolina’s 63rd house district, said that the city could start with a registration requirement for vacant residences, which could lead to the assessment of fees if the owners of these homes “choose” to let them remain uninhabited.
The councilman proposed another mandate that would require the owners of vacant homes to secure them from trespassers. He also suggested “permitting deadlines” for fire-damaged properties and a “receivership” option to make it easier for the city to act if there’s confusion over a property’s title.
Finally, Baltutis called for the creation of a staff-level task force to coordinate the city’s inter-departmental response to substandard housing, home vacancy, and blight.
“It’s hard to imagine living next to these properties. I live a block away from one on Front Street [where the home] had burned down, and it sat with police tape around it for almost a year before anything was done.”
– Burlington city councilman Ian Baltutis
Baltutis submitted each of these recommendations to Burlington’s city attorney David Huffman for him to peruse. In the meantime, he assured the rest of the council that, should his suggestions pass muster with the legal department, they could banish some the city’s most persistent eyesores, including those that have plagued his own neighborhood within the historic district along West Davis Street.
“It’s hard to imagine living next to these properties,” he went on to admit. “I live a block away from one on Front Street [where the home] had burned down, and it sat with police tape around it for almost a year before anything was done.”
