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Waterboarding Northland Avenue

An absentee landlord is punished and the whole block suffers

The brown house at 133 Northland Avenue has an inglorious recent history: It sat empty for the last year and intermittently over the course of the last decade. When it has been occupied, neighbors say, more often than not it was a crackhouse.

About a month ago, one Northland Avenue neighbor, George Winfield, saw two men clearing the brush from the overgrown, glass- and trash-filled backyard. He considered that a bad sign: If the owners were cleaning up the property, that might mean they were planning to rent it again, which might mean more crack dealers. Relatively speaking, vacancy trumps criminality.

Winfield talked to the two men, who told him they were not the owners but worked for the owners. Winfield told them to carry this message to their employers: The neighborhood would prefer that this time around they rented the house to some nice Canisius College students instead of to crack dealers.

Before the two men left, Winfield noticed them using a special tool to turn on the water to the house at the curbside valve. As it turns out, the owners of the property, the 133 Northland Avenue Trust—whoever that might be—have fallen behind on water bills, and as a result the water has been shut off and the house is listed in the city’s October tax foreclosure auction. That’s good news, as far as the neighborhood is concerned; a new owner could not be worse than the faceless trust that owns the house now.

But here’s the bad news. Last week Winfield was paying his water bill downtown, and he mentioned to the clerk that he’d seen men illegally turning on the water at 133 Northland. The American Water clerk looked up the address, confirmed that the house was on the auction list for unpaid water bills, and added that the Buffalo Water Authority was aware of the owners’ penchant for turning the water on after it had been shut off. In fact, the owners were about to be punished: A crew would soon be dispatched to dig up the curbside water valve and fill the hole with concrete. To return water service to the building, the owners would have to pay a $3,500 repair bill.

Here’s what troubles Winfield about that: Who’s going to bid on a house at auction that has an extra $3,500 liability attached to it, in addition to back taxes and water bills, possible code violations that need to be addressed, and basic repairs? The total assessed value of the property is $24,200. It sold in 1990 for $14,000 and in 2007 for $4,600. You don’t need to get inside the house to see that the curbside valve has been disabled. No one is going to buy that house.

The current owners don’t seem likely to pay the $3,500 penalty, either; they’re already not paying water bills, and the sort of tenants they’ve rented to in the past don’t really need running water.

The stretch of Northland west of Jefferson where the house sits is mostly well cared for, a tight-knit neighborhood where people greet each other from porches overlooking well tended gardens. It’s one of the East Side’s stronger neighborhoods, but a handful of problem houses like 133 Northland remain a drag on the investments those who live there make in their community. “We’re just a couple of houses away from a solid block,” Winfield said recently, as we stood in front of 133 Northland. But the block could swing either way fast.

The American Water clerk told Winfield that the practice of removing curbside valves and pouring in concrete is intended as a deterrent to discourage homeowners from turning water on illegally. Another clerk confirmed the practice and the price tag, and said that the company—which runs the city’s water service under contract with the Buffalo Water Authority—has punished quite a few homeowners this way.

On can sympathize with American Water’s desire to punish those who try to steal water and tamper with infrastructure that belongs to the city. But in this case the punishment seems to ensure that 133 Northland’s inglorious past is perpetuated into the forseeable future.

“Kinda turns it into a permanent crackhouse, huh?” Winfield said.

geoff kelly

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