Parishioners Target Vacant Lot

By DEBORAH HIRSCH • Courier-Post Staff • December 26, 2008

CAMDEN — Members of Sacred Heart Catholic Church in South Camden are spending the holiday season praying that city officials can help them do something about a nearby vacant lot that has turned into a de facto meeting spot for drug dealers and dumping ground for trash.

Starting today, members of the Camden Churches Organized for People community group affiliated with Sacred Heart said they will take turns calling their city councilwoman, Dana Burley, each of the next 22 days to remind her of their mission to improve the abandoned lot at 438 Emerald St. in the Waterfront South neighborhood.

Cassie MacDonald, 43, who lives about two blocks from the property, said the calls are intended to be a simple, heartfelt way of making sure that their concerns aren't forgotten.

"We can see it right under our nose what was happening there," she said. "If a place is neglected then it will continue to attract further degradation. We're offering our energy and our creativity and our willingness to do the work. We need other parties to meet us."

Sacred Heart members said they began cleaning up the lot this summer, putting up a small fence and asking police to keep an eye out for criminal activity there. Two weeks ago, they met with Burley and other city officials to offer their help maintaining the lot until something is built there.
It sounds like a logical idea, but there's one major obstacle: the owner of the lot, who went missing at least a decade ago. Now the property is tied up in thousands of dollars worth of tax liens that are held by a private corporation. The city can't afford to pay off those liens, which means it can't acquire the property until it goes through a lengthy, complicated foreclosure process.

Burley said she supports efforts to keep the neighborhood clean but the city can't give them permission to do anything to a privately owned property.

"Tomorrow the owner could come and say, "Why are you on my property?' " she said. "I understand their frustration. It's not that we're pushing this aside or washing our hands of it. It's just that we're limited in what we can do."

It's the same story for thousands of other abandoned lots in the city. Because those properties are privately owned, the city has no legal authority to do anything to them unless they present a hazard to the public, such as a home that could fall apart at any time, said Public Works Director Pat Keating. In those situations, he said, the cost of the city's board-ups or demolitions are added to the liens on the property.

If a neighborhood group wants to clean up an abandoned property, Keating said, the city won't stop them. But other than picking up bags of trash, he said, the city can't get involved.

Sacred Heart Camden Churches Organized for People members said they were impressed that the city took their concern seriously, but didn't believe there was no way to work around the legal complications.

"This issue isn't disappearing just because they don't want to look at a creative way to make a positive change on Emerald Street," said Sacred Heart member Sean Dougherty, 50. "We just don't accept that. On almost every block there's at least one abandoned lot. We've had enough inaction and it's time now for some positive change."

Dougherty and other members vowed to investigate how tax liens work to see if there was some way to do something about abandoned properties without opening the city to lawsuits. If that's not possible, they said, they'd lobby for changes to speed the foreclosure process on abandoned properties.

In the meantime, the group plans to continue calling attention to the issue.

On Saturday, they processed around the block singing Christmas carols, handing out cookies and talking with neighbors about their hope for a better neighborhood. Andrea Ferich, 28, said the event was intended to be a joyous way to begin reclaiming the lot.

"We just needed to get together and pray because we don't know the answers," she said. "You can be as powerful to bring about change through prayer as you can through action."

Reach Deborah Hirsch at (856) 486-2476 or dhirsch@camden.gannett.com