When houses in the City of Lubbock are abandoned by their tenants, the City will often get involved by demolishing structures that are not fit to inhabit.
“A lot of times houses may be boarded up, and while we keep an eye on those, the ones we’re looking for are the open accessible ones,” said Stuart Walker, Code Enforcement Director for the City of Lubbock. “They’ve been abandoned, vandalized in some way, and they create an immediate health and safety issue in a neighborhood.”
Walker said the code enforcement department moves to put a demolition order on the home from structural standards court if the property owner does not want to repair the structure.
“We probably take about five to court every month. I want to say our department demolished 25 to 30 last year,” he said. “We make sure we get all those people notified when we go to court, so that can take a little bit of time depending on how difficult the chain of title is.”
Walker budgets approximately $80,000 each year for the demolitions. The funds come from taxpayer dollars.
“We have run out of money [in the past]. And some years we’ve had to wait to be able to go forward on some of the demolitions,” Walker explained.
“If we can contact a property owner or if a house is in pretty good shape, just been broken into, we may simply chose to get a secure order for that property,” he said. “What the intent is, is to take these houses that do not meet minimum housing standard, and go ahead and either get them repaired to minimum housing standards or get them demolished.”
“The most common reason properties get abandoned is the owner dies and doesn’t have anyone to pass it on to. That’s the most typical scenario we see,” he explained. “Occasionally they’ll be one that somebody moves into and it’s in such bad shape that they don’t have the means to fix it or there’s something wrong with the title so they can’t get any assistance or anything like that. You know, they just walk away from it, but those are few.”
Walker said some homes go from “reported” to “demolished” in 45-60 days. Others take a few years, he said. The average time, according to Walker, is typically 90 days. He explained the City does not take ownership of the property.
“If a property has been totally abandoned and doesn’t have anybody there interested in it, it can go very quickly,” he said. “We want to afford somebody that steps up and has an interest in the property, we want them to go ahead and get it taken care of. But in those cases there’s not anybody, our process is to ask for a demolition order.”
Walker recommended anyone with questions or concerns to call the City of Lubbock by dialing 311 or (806) 775-3000.