The grass is greener
By ELENA GRIMM egrimm@daily-chronicle.com
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| Pat Daly inspects the plants in the garden in front of his DeKalb home. (Beck Diefenbach – bdiefenbach@daily-chronicle.com) |
Incentives come in all shapes and sizes.
Nine years ago, Val Devine's incentive was competition. She walked through the neighborhood of her new home on South Fifth Street, stopping at the corner house in admiration.
"I remember walking past it because my house looked totally different at the time," the 49-year-old theater production manager said. "I said, 'I want my house to look cuter than hers.'"
Devine's work paid off. She was among five other DeKalb homeowners and one business that were given the city's first Yards of Distinction awards, a new program that rewards nice-looking properties to prod not-so-nice ones into shaping up.
Two forces are keeping cities busy with property maintenance issues: First, a slowdown in the housing market is leaving many lots neglected. Second, with less disposable income, less work goes into the appearance of their homes.
But landscaping can add 5 percent to 11 percent to a home's value, according to research by the Department of Horticulture at Michigan State University.
The incentive program works because it relies on self-responsibility rather than having the government step in to fix things, Devine said. The house needed a lot of work nine years ago.
She has since added a walkway to the porch and rehabbed the entire porch area to make it inviting. Her yard might be nothing special to most people, but it's her "zen zone," she said.
"To the seasoned landscaper it's no big deal, but for me it's where I can be after a hard day's work and feel a sense of accomplishment," she said. "For that moment you can see the grass is cut, and the flowers are blooming."
Who mows the grass?
In Sycamore, the city council recently agreed to hire an outside company that will remove weeds and mow the lawns of property owners who are in violation of the city's nuisance ordinance. The property owners are then billed the amount of service.
More reports of long weeds and overgrown yards are expected on vacant lots in new subdivisions because of the slowdown in the housing market, said George Davis, the city's ordinance enforcement officer. And the mowing company had its first job on Tuesday – at a builder's lot in the Heron Creek subdivision.
In 2008, Davis received 146 weed complaints, and in 2007, 120 complaints, mostly from neighbors upset about the unsightly view out their windows. So far this year, Davis has receiving about 100 complaints – barely scratching into the "busy months" of June, July and August.
In Sandwich, grass won't be allowed to grow as tall anymore. Alderman voted Monday to tighten the legal limit of grass from 10 inches down to 8 inches.
And in Sandwich, grass won't be growing as tall. Aldermen voted to tighten up the legal limit of grass length Monday from 10 inches down to 8 inches.
As in Sycamore, the clampdown is geared at people who have purchased empty lots and have not yet built on them, Sandwich Police Chief Rick Olson said. For them, it's "out of sight, out of mind."
"Obviously, there are a lot of empty lots that people projected would be built on," he said. "But overall, the citizens do a nice job at making their neighborhoods look good."
As cities get tougher on getting property owners to clean up, situations such as foreclosures are nearly impossible to untangle.
Right now Davis is swamped, working on 15 foreclosed homes and 40 builder and developer lots.
"It's tough because I have to track down who's responsible," he said. "The builder will tell me that his lots were taken from him; he's not responsible anymore. He'll tell me the bank. I'll talk to the bank, they'll say he's still responsible. He sends it back and says, 'I'm not the owner.'"
In the event that no one claims a lot, cities would charge the property for mowing, then put a lien on the property if no payment is made.
But "liens are a last resort, absolutely the last resort," Dekalb Public Works Director Rick Monas said.
A new approach
DeKalb's Yards of Distinction program came out of the Citizens' Community Enhancement Commission just weeks after the city unveiled another new program, Neighborhood Improvement Coordination Effort, or NICE.
NICE's way of tidying neighborhoods is not by rewarding good behavior, but by encouraging residents to clean up problem properties without a threatening letter or an unwanted visit by an inspector.
The city has programs to rehab homes, many of which are for low-income homeowners and funded by federal grants. NICE tries to align these programs into a one-day volunteer event focused on a specific neighborhood.
The first coordinated effort was held in April, and former alderwoman Donna Gorski knocked door to door in a 4th Ward neighborhood to tell people about the day and programs they could qualify for. Then, Northern Illinois University students, along with city staff, got to work on the requested projects.
"We've had a lot of good responses in the approach we're taking," Monas said.
NICE is a pilot program, and another housing rehab day is in the works for a different area of the 4th Ward and possibly the 3rd Ward, he said.
What goes around comes around
Deb Baird has already nominated a friend for next month's Yards of Distinction award. Baird, who has run a home day care business for 25 years, said she was nominated for the award by a friend because her yard is a haven for birds and because of the work she's done to prevent storm water runoff.
It's all about respect, Baird said, something she tries to teach the daycare kids on a daily basis.
"I think all of us should be working to save storm water from going down and away," she said.
And Pat Daly, 55, also an award recipient, says keeping a nice property can change attitudes all around.
"People see that and it gets them talking," he said, referring to a sign tacked in his award-winning front lawn indicating its status. "It will get people to keep up their houses too, or get into gardening and landscaping themselves."
