TOLEDO, Ohio — Two years ago, 11 Investigates uncovered that the city of Toledo was losing millions of dollars in unpaid taxes from blighted homes, but now there is another issue.
Residents who are trying to do the right thing and take care of their homes are trapped amid a sea of blighted properties.
They say a man's home is his castle. Adrian McFarland decided to work for his castle.
He bought a home on Huron Street in the Vistula Historic neighborhood in 2022. The home was built in the 1800s and through the years, it began to show its age.
"I wanted it to be a pillar in the community," McFarland said. "When people come down Huron I want them to say, 'Wow, that's an amazing house.' That was my goal when I first got this house."
McFarland planned to turn a rundown duplex into a safe home for his family, but there's a problem. It's surrounded by abandoned homes.
"No one wants to spend 20 or 30 thousand fixing up the outside of their home when it's still surrounded by properties that haven't been touched since the early 2000s," McFarland said.
Those homes are owned by the Lucas County Land Bank which can't demolish them without permission from the Toledo City Historic Commission.
100 years ago, the neighborhood was dotted with castles. Now there are rows of crumbling structures that have lost their battles against Father Time.
"From kids playing with matches to someone just wanting to have a light to have somewhere to sleep at night," said the father of three. "If they knock that candle over, there's no distance in between these homes that everything that I've dedicated to or have been working for would go up in flames."
In the Old South End, Jarred Hedges is laying the foundation for his first home on Vinton Street near the Anthony Wayne Trail. He is trying to bring the blighted home back to life. A home that was also originally built in the 1800s.
"I was looking on Facebook for project houses for as cheapest of a price that I could find," Hedges said. "And I stumbled across this thing. There was a hole in the roof when I bought it. I fixed the roof, I fixed the outside walls, I mortared my brick foundation."
Hedges said he took this financial gamble because he had just become a father and wanted to work for his first home. He invests money and time in his property, but he's reminded of the blighted house next door.
"A lot of critters. I've had to battle with critters. There's actually a rabbit living beneath my home. He may pop out. He might not," Hedges said. "And the mosquitoes are really bad. Like the insects, I'd have to have long sleeves and long pants or otherwise I'd get eaten up."
Back in October 2022 when Hedges bought the property in an online auction, he said he didn't know it was next door to a home that had caught fire months earlier.
That property is on the city of Toledo's demolition list and it is scheduled to be torn down later this year.
NSB Real Estate Investments Corporation in Van Wert owns a blighted property on Jervis Street in south Toledo. Melvin Siders has been living next door to it for two decades. He said it's been vacant for nearly the entire time.
"If you look at the fence line, it takes almost four feet of my yard from all the weeds and that coming up," he said.
The company bought four homes in February of this year for $29,600. Three of the homes, including the property on Jervis, are heavily blighted.
The Lucas County Treasurer's Office said that NSB Real Estate flipped two of the blighted homes in May for $17,329 to a developer in New York.
Even though NSB Real Estate flipped the two blighted homes for a profit, real estate investor Donald Haebegger doesn't think the company made a good move financially.
Haebegger said NSB Real Estate would be paying much more in taxes because they did not hold onto those properties for over a year. According to Bankrate, the tax rate on short-term capital gains from real estate is up to 37% while the long-term capital gains are taxed between zero and 20% depending on one's tax bracket.
We reached out to NSB Real Estate for comment and did not hear back.
Meanwhile, Siders is stuck in the middle. The blight next door to him still stands and the property isn't on the city's demolition list.
"That's what they've been telling me since 2005," Siders said. "That it's on the demo list and it'll be torn down. They ain't come out to do nothing."
A city of Toledo spokesperson provided the following statement:
Once it has been determined that the property can be added to the demo list, funding has to be identified to perform the work. The best way for residents to get properties added to this list is to call Engage Toledo and provide as many details about the condition as possible. Unfortunately, it can still be a lengthy process as the city needs to do its due diligence before demolition is performed.
Blight is a loaded term, it can encompass many issues from dilapidated structures to overgrowth and dumping, and making progress isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Demolition is one tool in our tool belt, and we’ve demolished nearly 1,500 structures since 2019, thanks to partnerships with the Lucas County Land Bank and funding from the Ohio Department of Development.
But the city has also made progress in renovating blighted properties—wherever possible, we would always prefer to return a building to working condition. Over 30 properties originally identified for demo were instead renovated by the owners to return them to use. From rooftop grants for homeowners to white box grants for commercial spaces, the city has made significant investments to bring vacant properties back to life.
Initiatives like our Clean Toledo Recycling Events and Block-by-Block neighborhood cleanups, our ambitious grass mowing program, and investments in beautification from planting trees to installing public art all serve a purpose not only in reducing blight in the short term but hopefully creating long-term change in the neighborhoods that need it most. We’re fixing a record number of roads annually and bringing in record amounts of federal grant funding for large projects like the Front and Main St. project in East Toledo and the Connecting Toledo Neighborhoods to Opportunity project in Junction/Uptown. It’s not an overnight process, but we wholeheartedly believe that progress that has been made.
For Melvin and others, there is frustration that they are trying to do the right thing. But their efforts may be lost with their dreams that are drowned in a sea of blight.