Though abandoned houses might not be a concern within Athens city limits, a drive through some of the smaller, rural villages of Athens County reveals several deserted homes that blemish the area’s rolling hills.
It is difficult to ignore the boarded up and broken down homes that seem to have been forgotten over the years in villages such as Millfield, Jacksonville, Trimble and Glouster.
Within Athens city limits, residents and students live mostly unaffected by the public health risks associated with abandoned buildings that the smaller towns and villages in the county cannot afford to prevent.
“Due to the strong rental market we have less (abandoned or vacant houses) than the rest of the county,” Athens Mayor Paul Wiehl said in an email. “We do have some houses that fail to meet our housing code and/or are in the process of being condemned.”
Trimble, a small town of around 400 residents located on state Route 13 north of Athens, currently has 15 abandoned homes, estimated Mayor Douglas Davis.
When three consecutive floods hit the village hard in 2004, it drove many residents out of their homes, he explained. Though Trimble tries to clean up the properties, it is a long process riddled with a need for funding.
“People don’t realize how hard it is,” Davis stressed. “After the floods, people just got tired of fixing their homes up and just left them. I’ve been working on some of these houses for seven or eight years. Some of them are just so bad and so far along that they need to be torn down.”
Glouster, a small village north of Trimble, has “quite a few” abandoned houses, said Miles Wolf, mayor of Glouster.
“We have torn down a few with some grant money and hopefully that’s going to be taking a couple of our major eyesores down,” Wolf said.
Off the top of his head, Wolf estimated that the cost of demolishing an abandoned structure would be around $20,000 to $30,000, depending on the health hazards in it, such as asbestos exposure.
He added that the village of Glouster has to rely on grants to take the houses down because “we don’t have the money in our budget to tear down housing.”
The Athens City-County Health Department does not keep records of abandoned houses, but receives about two reports of abandoned houses annually, said Donna Grueser, data processor for the department. She added that a representative from the health department would then visit the property, board up the windows and doors and get in contact with the owners to have it demolished.
There are a series of steps that code enforcement officers take when dealing with abandoned homes, explained John Paszke, director of the Athens Office of Code Enforcement and Community Development.
The officers work to track down ownership, which could lead to the owners taking care of the house or the city having the home demolished at the property owner’s expense.
Though he said there are currently no abandoned homes within city limits, Paszke said that past demolitions have cost anywhere from $12,000 to $15,000.
In the city of Athens, many abandoned homes have been torn down for newer construction projects, Paszke said. Others have been renovated and some have been demolished and never redeveloped.
“We do have some vacated, dilapidated houses that we’re trying to get people to clean up,” Paszke said.
Paszke added that when he took office four years ago, there were around 23 vacant and dilapidated homes that needed to be taken care of in the city. Now he estimated there are fewer than 10.
Though there are some vacant houses, the lack of abandoned houses citywide might be a result of college students occupying a large portion of housing. Paszke said that because of the high demand of the student rental market, there are not many — if any — abandoned homes at any given time.
For the smaller cities, villages and towns throughout the rest of the county that do not have a university population or the income that comes along with it, abandoned homes and the public health concerns associated with them are likely to be more prevalent.
“An abandoned, dilapidated, insecure home could be a problem for parties, squatters, et cetera just to name a few, not to mention the blight of an unkempt structure,” Paszke said.
In Trimble, Davis is worried about kids breaking into homes and doing things they should not do, and drug dealers using empty homes for business.
In addition, abandoned homes can be the breeding ground for deadly diseases.
Abandoned homes often leave opportunities for standing water, which is the mosquito’s breeding habitat, said Michele Morrone, associate professor of environmental health at Ohio University.
“The big (vector-borne disease) that we’re concerned about here in Southeast Ohio would be West Nile virus,” she said. The term “vector” refers to any insect or spider that spreads a disease through feeding activities.
According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, there were no positive test results for West Nile virus in Athens County reported in 2012, but as homes remain abandoned, mosquitos carrying the disease will have more room to multiply.
Rodents carrying vector-borne diseases and raccoons carrying rabies would see an abandoned structure as a great place breed as well, Morrone added. Rabies has the highest case of fatality rate of any disease caused by a virus.
In addition to health risks, abandoned homes are unappealing to potential homebuyers looking for a place to live. Davis said the abandoned properties in his community deter people from moving to Trimble.
“There are not too many people who want to buy a property next to an abandoned house,” Davis said. “If you are looking at a house and the property next door is falling down and has trash around it, you are going to turn away,” he added.
At any given time, the Athens County Commissioners have a set amount of money to tear houses down, Davis said.
He has to talk to them and show them the houses to get funding. Then comes the issue of tracking down the owner who has to sign off on the house. Sometimes a bank owns the home, in which case Davis must send multiple letters, a time consuming process.
Davis said once he gets in contact with the owner, they are usually willing to sign off.
With a budget of only $120,000, Trimble is not likely to solve their abandoned housing problem soon.
“It’s a hardship for everybody,” Davis said. “Especially in a town with no money.”
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