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.
Outside, the yard showed further signs of compulsive hoarding behavior and misuse of electrical wiring solutions. Dead and overgrown vegetation compromised structural safety and defensible space. A barn and a shed on the property were unsecured with signs that they were occupied, against the zoning laws of this area. Extension cords and electrical wires draped from tree to tree, seeming to pull power from the front units to provide power to both the barn and the shed. Further issues on-site included animal welfare and pest infestation. We found as many as nine cats and four dogs living at this property, with evidence of potential malnutrition.
Receivership Property is Transformed into Section 8 Rental Homes
With these unsafe conditions, especially due to the high risk of fire, we were on-site immediately to board and secure the property. We assisted the occupants of the property both physically and financially with relocation to safe alternative housing. Our professional organizer helped them sort through their belongings and we provided them with storage pods for their valuables during their move. Other work on-site consisted of rehousing some of the animals after the occupants decided that they could no longer be responsible for them. Crime was also a factor of this receivership and our security company reported two separate attempts to break-in.
With the relocation of the occupants and animals complete, we conducted a full clean-out. Our work to determine the cost of the remaining construction work needed to abate the code violations showed that there was not enough equity in the property for the receivership to complete this work. We presented a plan to the court to sell the property to a new owner committed to completing construction within a set period of time, whose work would be overseen by us.
When the new owner had completed that construction work, the municipality signed off on the full abatement of all code violations on-site. After that, we moved for discharge and the receivership was complete. The new buyer has turned the homes into two rental properties that meet the requirements to qualify as Section 8 housing, adding additional and much-needed affordable housing options for Californians.
