The 12-year-old conservatorship act has helped some landlords to build their Pittsburgh-area portfolios, but some property owners and neighborhood advocates are crying foul.
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| Kathleen Wilson stands in front of a four-unit house, owned by her family since 1983, on Wilkinsburg's Peebles Street. She is fighting a petition filed by a company run by attorney Marc Taiani, which hopes to take control of the house under the state's conservatorship law. (Photo by Jay Manning/PublicSource) |
On a sunny November day, attorney Marc Taiani and five other men walked into the stout brown house owned by 77-year-old Kathleen Wilson, intent on assembling the damning information they needed to seize control of it.
“An open sewer pipe. That’s something,” Taiani said as he toured the dusty basement of the four-unit house on Wilkinsburg’s Peebles Street. “Do you believe that’s asbestos right there?” he asked building inspector Bill Martin, pointing at the ceiling. (Martin said he couldn’t tell.) “They have locks on the windows,” Taiani mused later, noting a potential safety hazard. “They actually have key locks!”
Wilson, who is battling breast cancer and was accompanied by lawyer Weldianne Scales, could only watch as the team critiqued the house her family bought, in 1983, for $82,000. If Taiani could prove that it had not been recently occupied, marketed or substantially rehabilitated — and that it's a public nuisance, unfit for human habitation or a fire hazard — then his firm could be named the building’s “conservator,” and might eventually become its owner.
Those are the rules laid out in the Abandoned and Blighted Property Conservatorship Act, a 12-year-old state law meant to allow responsible owners, under court supervision, to take over empty buildings that can otherwise drag neighborhoods down. Some community groups have used conservatorship petitions to seize and improve blighted properties, but more cases are filed by landlords and other private developers. And while conservatorship in the hands of a nonprofit may have helped East Liberty’s development, some observers are concerned about its potential effects in nearby Garfield and Wilkinsburg.
Judges oversee all conservatorships, and in many cases the property owner of record makes no effort to oppose a takeover. Once in a while, though, a determined owner like Wilson emerges.
Standing in the Peebles Street backyard littered only with one broken window, Wilson said that health problems compelled her to pause — but not end — efforts to rehab the building. Then, in April, Taiani filed a petition to make his company the building’s conservator.
Kathleen Wilson faces Bill Martin in the basement of a four-unit house she owns in Wilkinsburg. Martin was hired by attorney Marc Taiani to inspect the home. One of Taiani's companies has petitioned to become the building's conservator. (Photo by Rich Lord/PublicSource)
“It’s unadulterated greed,” Wilson said. The petition spurred her to scramble to hire a lawyer, restart work on the property and secure financing, in between chemotherapy appointments. Of the seven-month court fight with Taiani, she said: “This has taken a lot of energy.”
Taiani, in an interview conducted on the Peebles Street sidewalk, said he’s just trying to convert an abandoned house, six blocks from his own Wilkinsburg home, into occupied apartments. “Had Ms. Wilson taken care of the property, as a true owner should, and maintained it, and had it occupied,” he said, “then we wouldn’t be here today.”
'Amazing discretion'
The law that Taiani is using to try to take control of the Peebles Street property aims to balance the rights of owners with the realities of abandonment.
Property rights are a pillar of American law — starting with the Fifth Amendment’s restriction on government seizure of private property — but they are not absolute. The Great Recession of 2008, which saw surging foreclosures, spurred concern about properties left to decay by disinterested owners. So state legislators, led by then-Rep. Don Walko, a North Side Democrat, passed an act allowing entities “with experience in the rehabilitation of residential, commercial or industrial buildings and the ability to provide or obtain the necessary financing” to petition courts to take control of abandoned properties.
Under the act, properties are eligible for takeover if they meet all of the following criteria:
- Haven’t been legally occupied for 12 months;
- Have neither changed hands in six months, nor been marketed for sale for 60 days
- Aren’t subjects of foreclosure filings;
- Could potentially attract children who might then be harmed by conditions on the property;
- Risk attracting prostitution, drug use or vagrancy;
- Negatively affect the wellbeing of neighbors;
- Are found to fit three of the following five characterizations: public nuisance, unfit for human habitation, risk of fire, subject to unauthorized entry, or in need of substantial rehabilitation and not subject to any such work in the prior 12 months.
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