Instead, the dead man's mother turned the house into a rental property. Gloria Jones got a city permit to rent the house and the city continued to send tax bills, which she paid. Jones didn't realize the house had been seized until this year when she tried to sell it and discovered a lien, said Rudy McPhaul, the real estate agent representing her. But McPhaul said the city gave Jones no credit for the years she paid for improvements on a house that belonged to the city. They screwed up and they screwed us up.
Communication lacking Abandoned houses are at the forefront of the city's war on drugs.
More than two dozen of the houses where police have made three or more felony drug arrests between 1996 and 1998 are abandoned. But the people who bust dealers in the vacant houses and the people responsible for tearing down abandoned houses don't always communicate. Geni Giannotti, director of the city's Buildings and Safety Engineering Department, said that she gets no information from police that would help her decide which of the city's estimated 4,300 vacant structures should get demolition priority. Police made three drug arrests at the house several days apart last December as well as at least one in 1997 and one in 1996. The people who live around the house say that it's been vacant for at least five years.