Posts in Crime
Scene of a Tragedy is Transformed into a Treatment Center Through Receivership

Although we’ve performed major renovations both before and since, this particular scenario made demolition the most feasible option. The continued negligence from the owners plus the comparatively low cost of leveling versus restoring allowed us to give the property a new beginning from the ground up. Once we had cleaned out the property and safely disposed of the hazardous material, we gave the City’s fire department the opportunity to use the property for a practice drill and training exercise, including a controlled burn—a fitting reversal of the property’s initial status as a fire hazard.

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Upscale to Unsafe: Once Popular Hotel is Declared A Public Nuisance

A property deteriorated from an upscale establishment into a public nuisance. When the nuisance conditions were finally remedied, space was created for the property's redevelopment. While most would not have anticipated the decline of this once popular and prestigious establishment, the story is familiar to CRG. It shows just how effective health and safety receivership can be at remedying nuisance properties and initiating a ripple effect for revitalization efforts.

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Receivership is Used to Tackle a Dangerous Junkyard Illegally Operated Across Multiple Residential Lots

A quiet neighborhood was plagued by a property owner who was operating an illegal junkyard across 12 residential lots. Shipping containers and other debris were used to fence around some of the properties, partially concealing numerous items including inoperable vehicles, shopping carts, tires, old appliances, and scrap metal. The majority of lots were vacant, but one lot had a single-family home in poor condition on it where debris was stacked up against it and junk strewn throughout the exterior. Another lot contained a burned-out structure that was not fit for human habitation, but which was occupied in some capacity. In addition to these hazardous conditions, occupants had trailed extension cords through windows to get electricity from one area of the property to another.

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CRG Steps in After Owner Sets Fire to Hazardous Property Putting Firefighters and Neighbors at Risk

After over two years of enforcement efforts to get the owner of this property to bring their home into compliance, the municipality red-tagged the house deeming it unfit for habitation due to the conditions onsite. Issues included no electricity or running water, piles of junk, evidence of pest infestation, human waste, unmaintained landscaping, and structural inadequacy.

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Nuisance Abatement Provides Valuable Training for Southern California Firefighters

Controlled practice burns are good for both the neighborhood and for firefighters, and these particular properties were found by a court to meet the criteria for demolition. This unique approach fits when a variety of factors exist: the nuisance property is not physically and financially salvageable; the nuisance conditions will not jeopardize the safety of firefighters or neighboring properties; and environmental and weather conditions will not spread the fire beyond a controlled area.

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Court Appointed Receivership Proves to be a Solution to Tackling Lawless Mobile Home Park

A menace to the local community, this 52-unit mobile home park was left to rot by those who were legally responsible for it, including its owner and the lenders who financed it. Years passed where the park existed in anarchy, with no one in place to ensure it was operating in compliance with local and state health and safety laws. During this time the park subsisted under perilous conditions, which endangered the lives of residents and the surrounding community. The onsite violations of health and safety codes were so severe that the park lost its operating permit, yet occupants continued to live in unsafe, dangerous and unregistered units onsite, in violation of multiple laws.

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Historic Property in a Dangerous State of Disrepair Plagues its Surrounding Community

As a result of poor maintenance and unlawful home renovations, where a beautiful American Craftsman style home had stood for decades, we were appointed as the Receiver of this property as it had fallen into significant disrepair. Broken, littered with trash, and the exterior space housing illegal trailers, the home was a sore point within its quiet, charming neighborhood. Constructed in 1913, one of the first homes built in the town, the degradation of the property was especially apparent given its location next door to the city’s historical society.

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From Neighborhood Cancer to Community Asset: Turning an Apartment Building Around

We took over this 14-unit apartment building after poor management rendered it unsafe for tenants to live in and it had become an attractive nuisance to local criminals. Municipal code enforcement found 84 violations of health and safety laws onsite, including broken stairs and doors, an exterior littered with graffiti and trash, inoperable plumbing, as well as apartments without working electricity. Despite the fact that vulnerable young children, as well as elderly tenants, lived inside the apartments, and even with multiple opportunities to fix the issues plaguing the property, the owner refused to cooperate. The lack of oversight of the apartment building did not go unnoticed; gang activity became prevalent, with heavy drug usage onsite.

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Historic Hotel in the Heart of a City is Closed for Business for 20+ Years

Built at the turn of the 20th century, this elegant 3-story hotel is on both the California and National Register of Historic Places. Once a hub for the community, the site of weddings, school proms, and the center of political gossip in the municipality, sadly this hotel has sat vacant and in various states of disrepair for over two decades.

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CRG Works to Determine the Abatement Strategy for a Neighborhood Nuisance

With structural deficiencies including holes in the floors, walls, and ceilings, this building was dangerous to enter. Yet, broken windows, overgrown landscaping, and an accumulation of junk and debris visible from the street made it an attractive nuisance and it was continuously broken into, adding further problems for people living in the surrounding community. After seven years of code enforcement attempts to get the owner to address the conditions were unsuccessful, CRG was appointed by the superior court to takeover the property and create an abatement plan.

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From Fire Hazard to Affordable Housing Through Receivership

This project involved a property with two separate single-family homes on a large parcel of land. At the time of our appointment, both structures suffered from numerous health and safety code violations. There was extreme hoarding on-site as well as severely unsafe electrical wiring, endangering not only this property and its occupants, but neighboring properties as well. Piles of items blocked doorways and walkways, sometimes reaching the ceiling. Nearly every room had ropes and electrical wires pulled across them, creating walking hazards as well as further illustrating the pervasive fire risk.

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