Five years after giving a presentation on land banking to the Strong Neighborhoods Task Force, member Shawn Means delivered the exact same proposal to the group at its meeting Wednesday.
With the unwavering number of vacant and tax-delinquent properties in Charleston, Means once again laid out the many solutions a land bank could provide to the city: vacant property redevelopment, marketable titles for neglected properties and improved code enforcement, to name a few.
A land bank is a public authority created to efficiently acquire and manage properties.
"In most cases, it's a partnership between a city and county," Means said. "It's primary use is dealing with tax-foreclosed properties."
He noted that land banks should not have eminent domain rights.
Means explained the complex process through which investors purchase the liens on delinquent properties at tax sales for a few thousand dollars, on which they collect interest and later sell for a profit without making any improvement to the properties themselves. It becomes a continuous cycle, said Means, who is executive director of Habitat for Humanity of Kanawha and Putnam Counties.
"Some of the most savvy investors know how to make money off those titles; they really don't have any interest in the land," Means said.
If a delinquent property doesn't sell at a tax sale, it goes to the state and is placed on its Abandoned and Forfeited Lands listing, Means said, where it may remain for years as it continues to decay.
The city of Huntington has the only existing land bank in West Virginia, which is operating through its urban renewal authority.
While the Charleston Urban Renewal Authority could theoretically manage a land bank for the city, it would be limited to its outlined renewal boundaries, Executive Director Jim Edwards said.
Charleston would need the support of the Kanawha County Commission to agree to extinguish the tax lien on any properties a land bank acquires.
"They have to see it as an investment into the future. We're going to extinguish this lien with the hopes that through the land bank process, it will be returned to the tax base in a productive way, because it's going to be an improved property," Means said. "The only reason I can see that you wouldn't do it would be political."
Nicole Marrocco, the Abandoned Properties Coalition Coordinator for the West Virginia Community Development Hub, said one of the coalition's key focuses has been to increase the number of land banks in the state.
Under state code, land banks can be managed through an urban renewal authority or a freestanding "land reuse agency," Marrocco said.
"Part of the reason that doesn't exist right now is because current code doesn't allow for right of first refusal," she said, which would give the land bank the first pick of delinquent properties at tax sales.
"Right now, you have a whole lot of nemeses out there in the form of absentee landlords and tax lien pirates trying to make a buck on tax system," Means said. "They are preventing us from planning properly and executing anything."
The task force will address the subject at its meeting next month, during which Building Commissioner Tony Harmon and City Attorney Paul Ellis can provide more context on the legal implications and the commission's role in addressing tax-delinquent properties.
Reach Elaina Sauber at
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