Democratizing Urban Design: Playing Hot Potato With Housing

by DAVIS BROWN PRC Agency

One evening on a winter night, Joane got a call that her aunt died. As the executor’s phone call was about to end, he asked Joan and her family to listen at the last will. During the meeting, she learned that her aunt left a lovely house.

38 west 13th street Bayonne. A 100-year-old 3-floor single-family house. "Great," they thought. The family was middle-aged and close to retirement. They decided to try to sell it. After they first inspected it, they found a bit of a slum inside—Old 1970's wallpaper, lousy floor plan distribution, and leaking pipes behind the wall. The outside paint was in bad shape. The house needed work. They decided to hire someone for a low price, which came with no construction permits.

They put it on the market and received some interest. After a few months of waiting, an offer came. A young buyer was very interested in the house. Once they went into contract with the house, he hired an inspector to check it out. During the inspection, they found evidence of recent work in the walls as well as a new stove and washing machine to replace the basement’s broken ones. The basement had some signs of recent flooding, which is common in the area. Most of the houses in the Bayonne he had an interest in buying had something called a sub-pump or a french ditch. Coming from the city, he was baffled as to why there wasn't a way just to stop it. He is told it was just too expensive to do so. As a result, people just lived with floods in the basement and used those machines to pump out as much water as possible. But the little pump couldn’t compare to the sewage backups that he would later learn about.

The home buyer had already inspected three homes at a rate of $1,000 each. Those inspections didn't include electric, oil, or plumbing check—just a basic inspection. The inspector noticed that an oil furnace fuels the heating. The line to the oil pointed to a place below ground, which raised whether it was leaking. He paid another 1,000 dollars to have the oil tank and soil inspected. It was found to have contaminated the soil so deep that they dug almost two floors down to remediate the soil. The buyer purchased the home on the premise that it would be fixed so long it wasn't a danger. The EPA certified the fix when it was done. It was wishful thinking to believe this was the only problem.

As this young home buyer returned home one day from a night class at NYIT, he imagined taking a nice hot shower while making the return home in the cold at 1:00 am. He turned on the water and waited for the hot water to flow but to no avail. He went down to check his basement only to find it flooded with sewage. He lit a cigarette and then called a plumber who charged him $699 to do the job. The plumber came the next morning and put the snake camera down the drain. It turns out that the home's sewage trap was made out of cast iron. The decay of the iron had clogged itself from the inside to the point that it pressurized the sewage between the ground floor leading to the outside for years. The camera exposed a very dense sewage-filled pipe with no way to reach the city's sewer line.

A couple of weeks later, he decides to pay for the $3500 house trap replacement. To prevent decay, the modern standard to use is PVC for cost efficiency. While the replacement is happening, he is asked to come downstairs to "see something.” What he saw was another costlier disaster. Back in the days, they used pressure connected clay pipes for the sewage system. They didn't count on the ground moving, which causes the shift and, ultimately, cracks of those pipes. As a result, the sewage that was flushed on the toilet never had a chance of reaching the main sewage lines. Finally, after many months of savings and knowing he will need a sewage line, he replaced it.

They had a whole crew of at least 8 men and an excavation machine.

At least $20,000, flushed down the toilet.

As the job was being completed. The project manager wanted to thank me for choosing them and told the crew to get ready to head out 3 blocks over to the next job that was of similar size. They do a couple in Bayonne alone every week.

You probably already know by now. Especially by the level of detail presented. This isn't science fiction. It's the story of my first home. Mistakes were made for sure.

But does anyone deserve to get stuck with such a home? Don't get me started on the other issues that came after. This experience has shown me a lot about home ownership and the dangers of home buying. What continuous to confuse me every day is: how do cities account for this in their master plan?

As far as I have researched, they do not. They assume some investors that will displace an owner when the property is distressed.

There are no city ordinances that do not bury homeowners in debt to prevent distressed properties.

At least nothing that really helps people bring value while fixi