W. Phila. neighbors fight to save their block

One in an occasional series.

Carolyn McClary stands on her porch, near her bay window of lacy white curtains and silk flowers, and stares at the block's nemesis.

Three doors down, at 1446 N. Conestoga St., strips of wood hang from the porch roof like streamers. The roof sags over broken windows. Raccoons take refuge. On the metal sheet of a door a notice warns: "Danger. Keep out."

No one has lived in the crumbling rowhouse on this narrow street in West Philadelphia's Carroll Park for 10 years, guesses McClary, the longtime block captain.

So neighbors maintain what they can. They cut the grass and shovel the snow - or, being of a certain age, pay someone to do it. And they pick up the debris that blows their way.

Peeking over her glasses, McClary, 63, a retired librarian who works part time, tells how one neighbor copes. Living next to the eyesore, James Henry hung a blind between the two porches. When the weather turns warm, he pulls it down, to shut out the sight if only for a moment, so he and his wife can sit and enjoy their flower garden.

McClary is still searching for a solution.

"Some people decide to sell," she says. "But for those who choose to stay, you worry that before you know it, it's the whole block."

Conestoga Street is a stitch of 25 brick rowhouses, some with awnings and porch furniture, that intersects with Sharswood Street, which is troubled by its own number of ghostly houses.

Like many of her neighbors, McClary grew up here. Her father, a carpenter, now deceased, and her mother, a seamstress, bought her house when she was 7.

"I feel now, where I am, at least let me try to keep it up," says McClary. "My motivation, for staying and caring, is because of attachment."

She admits it's also partly a matter of survival. Her house is paid for, and her income is limited. She asks herself, "Where could I afford to go?"

On a corner of her block, a dirt lot sits where 1408 once stood. The street has already lost one tooth; now another is rotting.

"I would like to see it renovated," McClary says of 1446, "and brought back to life. Because what happens, it weakens the whole block. None of these houses were built to stand alone."

McClary isn't sure who owns the house. She lost track sometime after a long history that involved a death, a divorce, and someone's moving on.

The city also lost track.

The Board of Revision of Taxes lists the owner as Harry S. and Lillian Gilman. The Revenue Department, which collects those taxes, says the owner is Lester Opher.

The Department of Licenses and Inspections has sent violation notices to the Gilmans at the abandoned property. The deed, however, shows that Opher is the owner.

The document reads that in 1968, seven months after her husband died, Lillian Gilman sold the property to Opher and his wife, Carolyne, for $4,000. According to public records, Opher, 70, has lived in Fayetteville, N.C., for the last 13 years

Efforts to reach Opher and Gilman were not successful.

No one has paid property taxes on 1446 N. Conestoga in 15 years. The city is due $10,736 in principal, penalties, interest, and fees.

"As a general norm," says Cynthia White, chief deputy of tax enforcement in the city's Law Department, "if a property is delinquent two years, it's eligible for sheriff's sale."

When asked how 1446 N. Conestoga St. could rack up more than a decade of delinquent property taxes and remain off the auction block, White replies: "There isn't a formal process. The only formality is that it has to be delinquent."

The city has 31,491 properties with taxes past due 10 years or more, according to Revenue Department records. That represents $61.8 million in lost revenue.

Based on this year's city budget, that amount would fund the libraries for about two years or cover the Parks and Recreation Department's budget for one year.

Generally, says Dan Cantu-Hertzler, chair of the Law Department's corporate and tax group, the city sues homeowners for delinquent property taxes and recoups money through sheriff's and tax-lien sales.

A massive foreclosure on delinquent properties "could create some big holes in some neighborhoods," he says, "and we're trying to get things back to where everyone is expected to pay. We recognize it's a problem."

The city initiated legal action on 1446 N. Conestoga but suspended it in 1999. White, from the city's law department, wasn't sure why.

Five years later, in 2004, the city gave the account to a collection agency to go after the taxes, "and they weren't able to collect," White says. So in 2009 the city took back the effort.

After The Inquirer asked about the house, White said, "We've begun the sheriff's sale process. There's no court date as yet, but this property will get into sheriff's sale this year."

There's no guarantee someone will buy it.

The property's market value is $16,100. If the taxes remain unpaid, in a few years the owner will owe more in taxes than the house is worth.

In the meantime, L&I monitors the decline.

The house has been inspected seven times in the last three years, according to department records. Last year, the agency boarded it up, tacked up the "Danger" sign, and, relying on BRT records, mailed a violation notice dated March 6, 2009, to Gilman informing her that the property was unsafe.

The certified letter reads that the "floor/ceiling assembly," rear wall, and roof are "partially collapsed or in danger of further collapse."

A year later, on March 9, the property was inspected again. Still unsafe.

"Our main goal is to try to get the private owner to make right," L&I Commissioner Frances Burns says. "The struggle is when there's no owner, when we can't find the owner. Then the best thing in terms of what L&I has to offer - I do think of us as an ally - is to do that cleaning and sealing, and monitor the deterioration to the point where we'd have to demolish it."

Once the house is declared "imminently dangerous," meaning an inspector believes it might collapse within 90 days, the city can knock it down and bill the owner for the trouble, Burns says.

That point, from unsafe to imminently dangerous, can take six to 10 years, she says.

"I empathize that when you see the first sign of a vacant home, you start to think, 'What does this mean for our neighborhood?' " says Burns. "Those properties, it's almost like they're taking out the fabric of the block."

McClary agrees. Soft-spoken, she says she wishes the city had moved faster to save the house, before property owners skipped town or died, before the house they left behind started falling apart.

"It's not fair to their neighbors," McClary says. "And these people owe the city money, too, so it's a win-win for the city to go after them. I don't know. After it goes so far, no one pays attention."

Jeremy Nowak, president of The Reinvestment Fund, a nonprofit that finances neighborhood revitalization in Philadelphia and the Mid-Atlantic region, says the city wins or loses its fight against blight one block at a time.

"Cities fall apart or do well not based on big, fancy things that happen," says Nowak. "It happens on a lot of mini-decisions that go on all the time. 'Should I buy a house? Should I send my kids to school here?' Conversations that happen over the dinner table. When you have houses falling apart, and no one can do anything about it, and you don't have a responsive public sector, it contributes to the feeling that the city is in decline."

Throughout McClary's years on Conestoga Street, she has helped watch over kids and look after elders. She organized block cleanups and parties, distributed recycle bins, and called the city to tow abandoned cars and fix streetlights.

In recent years, though, she says, activities have slowed down.

"By everyone being older, when we have a cleanup I ask them to do what they can."

For her part, she tries to be "reachable, knowledgeable."

The block association used to collect dues. Now McClary says it collects only for funerals. "It's better to collect as you need it," she explains.

Many of the families she grew up with have moved on or passed away, she says, recounting the number of properties sold or rented.

Staring down at the withering 1446, McClary wonders: "Maybe I'm asking too much of this old neighborhood."

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