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Health & Safety Receiverships are an effective tool to restore vacant and abandoned properties when traditional code enforcement efforts have failed. Across the nation, numerous residential and industrial properties remain vacant, half-constructed, or abandoned, serving no productive purpose. These properties are more than an eyesore—they pose a direct threat to the health, safety, and welfare of surrounding communities. Vacant properties are strongly correlated with increased crime and vandalism, accelerated neighborhood decline, and depressed surrounding property values. They frequently constitute a public nuisance and impose ongoing costs on local governments through repeated code enforcement actions, police responses, and fire department calls. Vacant residential structures often become havens for criminal activity, while abandoned industrial sites are susceptible to illegal dumping and environmental hazards. When left unsecured, vacant properties are easily overtaken by trespassers, leading to heightened risks of fire, unsafe living conditions, and criminal conduct. Vermin infestations are common and can quickly spread beyond the property itself, impacting nearby homes and businesses. A court-appointed Receiver offers an effective and judicially supervised remedy for these problem properties. Through receivership, properties can be secured, rehabilitated, brought into code compliance, and returned to productive use, reducing public safety risks, stabilizing neighborhoods, and relieving municipalities of ongoing enforcement burdens.

The City of San Diego successfully utilizes the health & safety receivership remedy for its most challenging substandard properties. San Diego KGTV 10News recently aired a story on how the City of San Diego approaches hoarding and other severe conditions within its communities. Receiver Red Griswold provides his insight and experience regarding the role of a receivership and how the remedy can resolve dangerous situations.

Health and Safety Receiverships are an extremely valuable remedy to alleviate blight and to restore problematic properties within a community or neighborhood. A Health and Safety Receiver is a neutral third-party appointed by the court to take temporary control over substandard properties with the intent of resolving any potential health and safety threats. A Receiver is responsible for repairs and restoration to the property and to ensure that the property is transformed back into a safe and habitable dwelling. Health and Safety Receiverships can successfully rehabilitate distressed properties when the home owner is unable to remedy the code violations on his or her own. Health and Safety Receiverships are a very effective solution to bring a property into compliance with building and housing codes while also providing residents a safe place to stay while the rehab project is underway.

Health and Safety Receiverships are utilized for a wide arrange of distressed properties, including fire damaged properties. Fires may ignite outside or inside a property for a number of different reasons. Natural wildfires, electrical hazards, smoking and candles, just to name a few. Sometimes the conditions on the property are already so severe (i.e. hoarding, ill-maintained structures, faulty wiring) that the conditions themselves cause a fire. Other times, a perfectly suited property becomes badly damaged by the flames, heat, smoke and water after a fire. Fire damage causes properties to become structurally unsound and compromised and at a risk of collapsing, making it dangerous for anyone to be onsite. Firefighters may have cut holes in walls looking for hidden flames or may have cut holes in the roof to release heat and smoke. Fires often re-ignite even after appearing to be extinguished. Hazardous materials and structural damage pose serious threats to the health and safety of the occupants and surrounding community.

A Health and Safety Receivership is a legal remedy to combat neighborhood blight and transform problematic properties back into safe and habitable structures. A house or building within a community may be deteriorating due to various reasons ranging from severe hoarding, contaminated or unsafe living environments, or owner abandonment. Deteriorating properties are usually produced because no responsible party is willing or able to address the problems on the property. Whether due to an uncooperative property owner, quarreling heirs, disputes regarding title, or an owner that cannot be located, the structure or dwelling is poorly maintained making it an eyesore and hazard to the community. When a property is in severe disrepair and a danger to its tenants or neighboring residents, the property will affect the entire neighborhood.

The California Partition Remedy addresses disputes between co-owners of a property. A partition action is utilized when co-owners cannot decide how to handle jointly-owned property. When a property is jointly owned by two or more parties, all owners have a right to the partition remedy to divide their interest in the property. Co-owners may be family members, friends, unmarried or divorced couples, or business partners. Usually co-owners buy or inherit property on good terms with the same objective in mind, but over time their interests diverge, and they develop conflicting ideas about how to use, manage, improve, or dispose of the property. Properties subject to partition include, but are not limited to, single-family residences, vacation homes, investment properties, commercial buildings, apartment buildings, and parcels of land.

Health and Safety Receivership actions often deal with homeowners who are packrats/hoarders, elderly, or mentally/physically disabled. These types of homeowners may not be able to properly maintain and care for their house, which leads to loss of control of the property and the commencing of a receivership action. A Court-Appointed Health and Safety Receiver is temporarily appointed by the court to address the health and safety concerns of substandard properties that have been neglected by property owners. A Health and Safety Receivership can successfully rehabilitate distressed properties when the homeowner is unwilling or unable to remedy code violations themselves.