By Michael Sarbanes
What do you do when drug dealers take over a vacant house in your neighborhood? When code enforcement, police action, and pressure on landlords all fall short, there is still an option – self-help.
Vacant, abandoned houses are magnets for the drug trade. Many neighborhoods are all too familiar with the "Field of Nightmares" maxim: "If you abandon it, they will come." For dealers, the vacant house provides a useful stash place; for users, a convenient place to cook and use drugs.
For neighbors, it can create a living hell. Groups of dealers and users take over corners and open spaces. The concentration of drug addicts trying to support a habit generates increased petty crime. A constant threat looms of random violence associated with drug dealing. For those living near the vacant property, the dangers are even more tangible: there is a far greater risk that the vacant house will burn down as drug users set small fires to prepare drugs. Accumulations of trash, food, and human waste encourage rats and other vermin.
In the spring of 1993, the Butcher's Hill community of Baltimore City was experiencing precisely this problem. Butcher's Hill is a neighborhood of three-story brick row homes that were once home to the city's prosperous butchers. After a period of deterioration under absentee landlords, some of the homes were rehabbed in the 1980s, and the neighborhood now contains a wide mixture of incomes and professions.
A vacant house, abandoned by an absentee landlord, attracted a trickle, then a steady stream of drug users and dealers. Traffic in and out was constant and heavy. "Day and night, they were out there, and acting as if the block belonged to them," says Pastor Robert Dodson, whose East Baltimore Church of God sits next door to the vacant house. "They got so bold that a group of them sitting on the front steps asked me what business I had standing in front of my own church." The church suffered a rash of thefts and attempted thefts in the rear of its property, an area that could only be accessed through the vacant house. Groups of dealers and buyers stood on the corners and interfered with residents on their way to and from their homes. The house suffered a major fire that heavily damaged the first floor.
"We began to observe very closely what the buyers and dealers were doing and where they were going. We quickly realized that two vacant houses were the base of operations for dealers and a handy spot for the buyers to go prepare their drugs. We kept written logs of what we saw and who saw it," said resident Carolyn Boitnott, who lived five houses away from the property. "To monitor the activity in the rear area of the property, which we could not see, I used to close the gate to the back yards of these vacant properties every morning, and by noon it would be open – every day, without fail."
Then began a frustrating search for a quick, effective solution. Armed with their observation, residents contacted the police. Already familiar with the property, police confirmed that it was a shooting gallery and a base for a low-level street drug dealing operation and occasional prostitution. Yet, practically, the police could do little to stop it. As long as the property remained open for use, arrests would have no impact. Patrol officers could never invest enough time to keep dealers and users out of the building.
Next, Butcher's Hill leaders contacted the city's housing department. According to the city's building code, vacant houses should be rehabilitated or torn down. Pending renovation, all openings must be secure against easy access. The code also allows the department to board up a vacant house and place a lien on the property. The vacant house in Butcher's Hill already had numerous violation notices.
While housing officials were sympathetic, the Butcher's Hill problem was symptomatic of a city-wide epidemic. City officials were confronting an increased number of vacant houses with a vastly diminished staff of inspectors and boarding crews. They informed the Butcher's Hill residents that it might take four to six months before they could send out a crew. There were other problems with having the city board the houses: with a heavy work load, city crews were rarely able to take much time to customize and reinforce the boarding. In addition, once the city crew boarded the house, if the boards were torn down, it could take another four to six months to replace them.
Meanwhile, the problem on the 2000 block of Baltimore Street was getting worse.
Butcher's Hill community leaders then contacted the non-profit Community Law Center, an organization that provides free legal services to community associations in Baltimore. The Law Center knew that vacant houses were a key topic of concern for community groups across the city.
"In the long term, communities want these houses fixed up or removed, and much of our work focuses on acquiring these vacants for community-based nonprofits," said Anne Blumenberg, executive director.
The center was looking for a quick, cheap, effective way to allow community residents to stop the nuisance caused by these open vacant houses. The code enforcement process often took too long and left community groups feeling frustrated and powerless.
An extensive history of common law cases says that in some circumstances, people "damaged" by a nuisance can fix ("abate") it themselves. The legal system is generally very wary of self-help, and self-help nuisance abatement is not appropriate for all types of nuisances. Typically, the common law rule involves nuisances that affect the health and safety of a person or "annoys or obstructs the daily convenience and use of such private property that cannot wait the slow process of ordinary forms of justice."
In such situations, people damaged by a nuisance are not totally without recourse. They are entitled to abate nuisances themselves if they can show that:
The residents then went to court to cover their total costs of $340.15 in labor and materials. They filed their case in small claims court, which is both the fastest and most informal Maryland court. At the trial, for which the owner did not appear, the plaintiffs offered testimony of police officers, neighbors, and housing inspectors to establish that the steps that they had taken to abate the nuisance were reasonable. An initially skeptical judge was convinced to ruled in their favor.
On the heels of this victory, Butcher's Hill residents contacted the owner of another vacant house on the same block. Although previous discussion had been fruitless, this time he boarded the property the next day.
Now the Butcher's Hill community is working to acquire and rehabilitate the vacant houses. While they pursue this goal, the former drug house is sealed and silent, and the drug transactions on the block are few and far between. n
Copyright 1995
Michael Sarbanes is a former staff attorney for the Community Law Center in Baltimore. For more information about the center, call: 410 366-0922.
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