City owned property in historic district available for sale

Click here for the surplus property information. The value of the property sounds like it could be a steal.

Lake Worth's Surplus Properties

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When you drive down some of our city streets, half of what you see appears to be surplus. Many houses are vacant and abandoned.

Building affordable housing in Lake Worth started in the late 1990's.  Why this was so important then, or now, is a mystery. There are some people who want to put the blame on a few people within our city or a recent former commission for attracting the poor that resulted in big time slum and blight. This all started way before they were on the scene. It is time to stop the blame game;  it is now time to stop the madness of building more affordable housing and solve the problem.

But having so many years to build this housing in order to attract the poor, ended up eventually creating the perfect storm. Nearly every residential property is affordable, or a great portion of our inventory within our city. Over one-half of our housing stock are rentals.

Our affordable housing attracted speculators and investors some of whom became absentee or slum landlords.  They charged outrageous rental amounts that made the properties unaffordable. Renters started cramming 20 people into the rental units. It got totally out of control. With the recession and housing bubble that burst  resulting in foreclosures galore, this caused the biggest slum and blight this city has ever seen or ever imagined. Coupled with the illegal immigration problem, it was exacerbated even further. We were all left with an untenable situation. The result of all of this affected all property values within our city. Our homes' value, in many cases investments for our future, got wiped away over night, never to return.

We now have excess surplus properties and the City owns 131 properties with 25 of them up for consideration. The city commission now needs to decide what is the best way of handling this inventory. One suggestion was to sell the properties and have them owner-occupied with owners contributing to the tax base. Not sure about the legality of placing a deed restriction on the property to not  allow rentals as the Vice Mayor suggested, but at least we are finally talking about this serious problem that started over 20 years ago.

It is too bad we start talking when an issue is totally out-of-hand but at least we are talking.