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SCHENECTADY
A housing headache Building inspector’s office overwhelmed as winter batters foreclosed homes
BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter


Winter is taking a toll on the houses Schenectady seized through foreclosure last year. There’s so much damage that city workers can’t keep up with it all. Wind has pulled shingles off roofs, leaving leaks to drip unnoticed inside vacant rooms. Heavy snow has left cracked and broken sheds in its wake. At one house, the siding is stripping off in chunks. It has lost about an eighth of its siding already, and a full-story swath is missing on one side, leaving the house frame vulnerable to the elements. In one of the worst cases, part of a roof piece fell off the vacant house at 1352 Albany St., landing in a tree nearby. Electrical wires that had gone through that piece of the roof to the house are dangling in the air. City Council members had worried last summer that the city might get stuck with expensive repairs if it held foreclosed houses over the winter. At the time, they hoped to quickly sell the houses.
    But many were in serious disrepair and the city’s contractor-rehab program only just started this winter. Three houses have been handed over for renovations, leaving more than 200 to the elements.
    Building Inspector Eric Shilling said his office is overwhelmed by the amount of repairs needed on those houses.
    “We’re trying. We’re doing the best we can,” he said. “There’s no way we are going to be able to keep them up to pristine condition.”
    Mayor Gary McCarthy did not return a call seeking comment.
    City workers did perform emergency repairs soon after the foreclosures last August. Shilling inspected all of the houses and ordered the necessary repairs. Then workers boarded up windows with special techniques and tamper resistant screws that appear to have kept vandals out.
    But they only did emergency work, such as roof patches.
    Some residents, who were cited for peeling paint on their properties, complained to Shilling recently because some of the foreclosed houses also had peeling paint.
    “They said, ‘Are you going to cite yourself?’ No, because I can’t paint 300 houses. You can paint one,” Shilling said. “They moved in to a house they chose. We got these because we were dealt this hand.” ....................>>>>........................>>>>.................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r00100&AppName=1

maybe a tornado will come through and take the houses to detroit where they can land on the wicked witch of the west...

I'm sure proctors can help to set that up

Quoted from senders

maybe a tornado will come through and take the houses to detroit where they can land on the wicked witch of the west...

I'm sure proctors can help to set that up

Maybe Fat Morris should stop stealing from the County taxpayers? no? How long does it take these stunad assessors here and in the City from starting a criminal action? Working together works! For them
never the County taxpayer.

I don't know how qualified shilling is.....but whoever it is that answers his phone is like brain dead!!! OMG!!

Proof positive that the Mayor has no clue how to run the City. The responsibility of these properties has been ignored for decades by the property owners as they fled (couldn't afford the increasing taxes, bankruptcy, foreclosure).

Where the heck is Metroplex??????????

They shell out $30 million for Proctors to acquire a new golden ceiling, yet there is not one Plex employee that has the knowledge to secure grants/loans for this City to help rebuild its neighborhoods.

Guess if Galesis name was on these deeds the Plex would be cutting the checks yesterday.  

maybe the city can buy ALL the houses, and maybe the city can charge us 100 grand per house for taxes and then give us back what we need. I trust them and so does Joebxr and Box. Government does it all right and if they dont then it is a situation where they need more tax $ and more power.

Quoted from GrahamBonnet

maybe the city can buy ALL the houses, and maybe the city can charge us 100 grand per house for taxes and then give us back what we need. I trust them and so does Joebxr and Box. Government does it all right and if they dont then it is a situation where they need more tax $ and more power.

The big green monster needs to be fed somehow.....

"....ask what you ca do for your country."

Who is this Shilling guy to make up new rules?

I was just wondering myself about some houses going through a third winter unoccupied in my neighborhood. One needed a new roof and paint job when it went on the market almost three years ago. How do these owners avoid getting cited? I also found out from someone who just purchased a house that it's a code violation that there is no skirting around the porch, he found out from his insurance agent, but the house had been like that all through the code sweeps. It mattered that the former owner new the right people, I guess.

It's a shame. In the popular 'shelter' magazines, I see articles about young people who have purchased houses just like the ones we have here, and they are all excited about restoring their treasure. Houses are not selling in Schenectady because of lousy, incompetent and even crooked management. People want these houses.

Remember when downtown was overwhelmed.....with people, with shoppers.

But then the dems came along, tossed out all the taxpaying businesses, spent tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to build or renovate for rich political cronies, made the homeowners pay the taxes of downtown, and now the city and downtown is overwhelmed with emptiness.

Quoted from mikechristine1

Remember when downtown was overwhelmed.....with people, with shoppers.

But then the dems came along, tossed out all the taxpaying businesses, spent tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to build or renovate for rich political cronies, made the homeowners pay the taxes of downtown, and now the city and downtown is overwhelmed with emptiness.

Downtown has been in perpetual renaissance since the 1980s.

They have spent tens of millions upon tens of millions to get a four lane busy downtown
turned into a 2 lane bottlenecked place for all to avoid.

25 million is now being spent to do the same to Erie Blvd. I guess for the 5 businesses left there.

The spending is the cause of Schenectady's problems, not the solution.

All for the facade.