Sacramento Wants Eyesore Properties Database For Public To See

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) —It's a first-of-its-kind response to urban blight.

Sacramento wants its vacant lot eyesores identified and registered in a city-wide database for the public to see.

There are 6,000 of them. One is off Mack Road and Center Parkway.
Raymisha Dunham lives across the street from the overgrown property.

"It's nasty," Dunham said. "It makes me not want to live over here, you know, you want to come out your front door and see something nice."

Sacramento code enforcement officers removed 10 tons of debris from this property earlier this year. But city hall never collected any fines.

It turns out, the owners of this massive vacant lot don't live in Sacramento. They don't live in California either. In fact, they don't even live in the United States.

The owners, B.C. Limited, are in Canada.

Sacramento city attorneys had to use an international treaty called the Hague Convention to serve the owners a public nuisance lawsuit, claiming the case "involved a large accumulation of trash, junk, and debris…."

Now a new city database for vacant landowners would require them to register phone numbers within just 35 miles of city hall, giving code enforcement officers a local contact when trouble turns up.

"If you don't have someone who can react when there is a problem, you may not get a reaction at all," Sacramento City Councilman Jay Schenirer said.

Schenirer spearheaded the database idea and says it's a first of its kind.

"If they have problems we are going to find them, and fine them," Schenirer said.

Holding Sacramento property owners accountable with a database to prevent absentee owners, from hiding. And leaving their eyesore properties for everyone else to see.

The Sacramento City Council will vote on the database idea next week.