Foreclosure problem in Carpentersville? No, executive says, but village seeks study

Carpentersville, like most every town, is dealing with issues that come with a proliferation of foreclosed homes.

To that end, the village has recently put in for inclusion on a federally funded grant through the Chicago-based Metropolitan Planning Council. The planning council would apply for the grant and the agency would hire the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning to investigate regional foreclosure issues and devise a study that suggests ways each town can resolve them.

But a local business owner who has already bought and fixed more than 100 homes in the Meadowdale subdivision on the village’s east side and continues to do so, says the village is wasting its time by putting in for the study, because in his opinion, he’s slowly resolving the foreclosure problem himself.

“(There’s) not a blight with foreclosures in Carpentersville; I bought them all or most of them,” said Tom Roeser, president of Otto Engineering, the biggest employer in town. “What Carpentersville should focus on, I believe, is championing what it has become and again, if you haven’t been here in five years, you haven’t been to Carpentersville.”

Community Development Director Dawn Wucki-Rossbach recently attended a four-day seminar with the Center for Community Progress at Harvard Law School, in which officials from 14 towns discussed how to deal with the challenges associated with vacant properties.

Between March 2011 and April 2012, 1,034 Carpentersville homes fell into foreclosure, which is nearly 10 percent of the village’s housing stock of roughly 11,000 homes. A figure listing the total number of foreclosures in the village was not immediately available.

Foreclosures have turned 22 percent of Carpentersville’s housing stock into rental properties, Wucki-Rossbach said.

Police Cmdr. Timothy Bosshart says that at times foreclosed homes have attracted a bad element, mostly kids or gang members breaking into the houses to throw parties or vandalize the property.

“It’s not an epidemic; it’s more of an inconvenience,” Bosshart said, adding that there haven’t been any recent problems. “It’s a quality-of-life issue.”

But as it stands now, the fallout from foreclosures in Carpentersville is pretty minor and has mostly involved working with banks or the public works department to maintain foreclosed properties, tracking down the owners to pay the subsequent bills or putting liens on properties, Wucki-Rossbach said.

Once in a blue moon, police are called to secure foreclosed houses, Wucki-Rossbach said.

“Most of the things we’re dealing with are pretty minimal compared to other places, so we’re pretty lucky with that aspect,” Wucki-Rossbach said.

Since 2008, Roeser, through his Homes by Otto program, has bought and renovated about 100 of the 200 Meadowdale homes in foreclosure. So far, he’s managed to sell 22 of them, with prices ranging from $125,000 to $155,000.

“I probably fixed (Carpentersville’s) foreclosure problem — I say that very seriously,” Roeser said. “What they need to do is help me advertise that Carpentersville has fixed their foreclosure problem and this is a terrific place to buy a home.”

Wucki-Rossbach said Roeser has definitely made a dent in putting foreclosed homes to use. She and Assistant Village Manager Steven Jones also don’t deny that the village should work harder to promote its existing assets.

But the study would offer a bigger look at regional foreclosure problems, help determine where Carpentersville fits into that framework and possibly guide future policy decisions, officials said.

“We need to do more, we need to not just do things as Carpentersville,” Jones said. “We need to ... work with some of our neighbors and work with some of the nonprofits.”