HOWELL – The Mayor and Council heard an update on the township’s demolition program, which focuses on dilapidated buildings that appear to have been abandoned to the elements by their owners.
Speaking before the Council on March 14, Howell Township Director of Land Use, Matt Howard, gave a brief history and summarized the current state of the municipality’s demolition program and the challenges it faces.
The program, which has been in place since 2018, utilizes township ordinances to target property owners who have allowed their structures to go into disrepair. Ideally, the goal of the demolition program is to have property owners take action to restore or remove buildings that have become an eyesore to the community.
“We have an abandoned property ordinance” which creates a registry of properties that are in violation, explained Howard. “Ultimately once you add a property onto the registry it stays there, and there’s some additional opportunities for [a] third party to come in and take ownership or potentially do clean-up.”
Howard worked with Township Attorney Joseph Clark and outside counsel on options the township had for matters that needed more immediate attention, finding applicable sections of the housing and unsafe building codes to move matters along at a faster pace.
With the use of township ordinances, officials can deem a structure completely uninhabitable or unsafe to the public and “can, without going into court, do a public hearing and give them notice.” The township would then give the owner of the property the chance to “remediate, rehabilitate, or demolish the structure” within a predetermined time period. If the situation is not rectified or addressed, the township then has the authority to demolish the structure and impose a lien on the property for the cost of the demolition.
“Not all of these properties are truly abandoned,” Howard explained. “Sometimes the people have fallen on hard times. A lot of the time they’re still paying the taxes because they’re trying to keep the property in their ownership.”
According to Howard, in the past three years the township has put five such property owners on notice, and they have produced mixed results. In some instances the town did the demolition, and in others, the owners paid the cost to avoid a lien being imposed. In one instance, the owner did the repairs necessary and sold the home at market value.
Howard’s department operates on a meager budget to complete the tasks that lie before them. Howard cited this as the reason that the pace of the demolitions has been slow, as the budgetary concern only allows for one or two demolition projects a year.
“We worked through COVID on these demolition projects [and] we’re nearing the end of our first list of five,” Howard explained to the Council. “We know there’s more out there. We’re going to notice another five to ten property owners. We’re going to hold a public hearing and we’re going to get going. It is a relatively slow process because we’re not trying to hit the budget.”
One area of the township that seemed of particular interest to the Council was the stretch of structures along Bergerville Road. In particular, Howard mentioned two abandoned homes on the south side of the roadway near the Pointe O’ Woods development, as well as a stretch of buildings on the north side of the street.
“We’ve gotten several complaints in the past about that,” Howard continued. “That’s one of those that should be demolished. There’s also a whole other set of issues on the north side of that road. There’s about ten to fifteen bungalows, an old hoarding situation, several other structures, and they’re all dilapidated [and] falling down. There’s no question they meet the criteria for demolition.”
Given the scale of the project, Howard estimates that the demolition for this area could easily run to $200,000, or essentially five years of work at the department’s current budget. The issues are primarily environmental inasmuch as the structures are all over 70 years old and have concerns with asbestos, lead paint and underground fuel tanks. The homes abut the shrubs, plants and deciduous trees that form a riparian buffer of the Manasquan River. While the township is looking to possibly use some of the state’s environmental statutes to force the owners to clean up their properties, it may not come to fruition. Ultimately, the cost of clean up would be borne by the township.
“We could do it,” said Howard. “It would cost. If we wanted to look at that property, not only are we expending two hundred thousand [dollars] potentially, [but] the likelihood of that lien getting repaid is very low. Because of the environmental constraints on the property, there may be no redevelopment possibilities.”
It is the environmental concerns that drive up the cost of the demolition of older structures, due to the hazardous materials they contain.
“Anybody could take a bulldozer and have a ball,” Howard remarked, explaining that demolition costs increase dramatically when the removal and legal disposal of hazardous materials is necessary.
According to Howard, his department is also looking to utilize a law recently passed by the State of New Jersey that specifically targets vacant or abandoned commercial and residential properties. The new ordinance would create an expanded registry and impose additional fines and costs on the commercial and residential property owners to incentivize them into initiating the clean-up work.
“It’s the worst of the worst properties for the demolition,” Howard explained to the Council. “We’re picking the ones with the hole in the roof that are falling down. Just a boarded-up house? From the [neighboring] resident’s [point of view], if you live next to that, you don’t want to see that. But it does not mean that may be a candidate for demolition.”
Councilman John Bonevich addressed the need to initiate work on the Bergerville Road area in light of the fact that the department was still working with a budget of $40,000 per year.
“I would say we should do triple that, for one twenty,” offered Bonevich. “It’s terrible driving down Bergerville Road. I mean there’s graffiti on all those bungalows, it’s disgusting.” His comments regarding the possible increase for the department’s budget drew nods of agreement and assent from the Mayor and other Council members. Bonevich indicated that increasing funding for the demolition program may well be a topic at the next Howell Township budget meeting.
