Bangor has taken in $44,000 in fees on vacant buildings since hiking its registration costs on them more than a year ago — but the number of registered vacant properties hasn’t yet shrunk as much as the city hoped.
The fee change, approved in May 2023, was intended to force the owners of those properties — most of which are banks — to do something with them rather than let them sit unused for years.
At the time of the fee change, Bangor had 70 properties on the vacant building list, only 16 of which regularly paid to register their buildings. This week, that list is 56 addresses long, according to Jeff Wallace, Bangor’s code enforcement director.
The fee to register a vacant property now sits at $500 and doubles with each biannual permit renewal, but caps at $4,000. This means the owner of an unused property eventually pays $8,000 annually if they let their property sit empty for years.
The fee spike also gave the city more power to enforce the rule, meaning the dozens of property owners who previously evaded the registration requirement were forced to pay.
In addition to hopefully increasing the city’s housing stock and chip away at the region’s housing shortage, the fee aimed to slash the number of vacant properties, which can be an eyesore, lower property values in the surrounding neighborhood, and be dangerous.
Though the number of empty properties hasn’t yet plummeted as city officials hoped, they aren’t discouraged.
Since the fee increase, Wallace said he has watched banks sell eight to 10 vacant homes to people who intend to turn them into housing.
“If they’re simply vacant, the bank sells them and gets them into the hands of someone who will use it,” Wallace said.
Furthermore, even adding buildings to the list is a sign of progress, Wallace said, as it means the city is identifying those unused homes and forcing owners to pay the costly registration fee.
“Ultimately, we want to get people in the homes, but getting them registered leads to the doubling fees and getting the owners to do something with them rather than re-registering,” Wallace said. “I think we’re going to see more homes unloaded by banks. There has been progress already.”
Eighteen of the city’s 56 vacant homes were added to the list after the city boosted registration fees.
Once an owner goes through the trouble of getting their property off the placarded or vacant lists, Wallace said the building generally stays off the list. He estimated that 90 percent of the homes that leave the vacant property list become viable housing.
The city’s pressure on those owners is especially helpful to Penquis CAP, a Bangor social services agency, which launched a program aimed at redeveloping previously vacant homes in Penobscot County into affordable housing.
Jason Bird, Penquis’ housing development director, said the agency watches Bangor’s vacant property list for potential homes to redevelop.
These houses are particularly attractive, Bird said, because redeveloping them is usually faster and cheaper than building an entirely new property. It also frees the neighborhood of the “real societal costs” that abandoned homes inflict.
“I applaud the city’s efforts to increase the fee so there’s motivation and incentive for owners to do something with them,” Bird said. “The city also has to walk a fine line and balance the overall community needs while respecting property owners.”
The fee increase didn’t apply to the city’s placarded properties, which are empty buildings deemed unfit for habitation due to a lack of utilities, fire damage, structural damage, leaky pipes, faulty electrical systems or sanitation shortcomings.
Bangor has 79 placarded properties on the list as of this week, compared with the 87 placarded properties on the city’s list in May 2023.
Seventeen of the homes on the list are only on it because their utilities have been turned off, Wallace said. There’s nothing wrong with the structures and the houses could be removed from the placarded list if someone turned the utilities on.
“That has been frustrating for years,” Wallace said. “Those are the easy ones to get off the placarded and vacant lists. The bank just needs to sell it to someone who buys it and gets the utilities turned on.”
