Bank of America Ordered To Clean Up Blight

A national bank that city officials say is the biggest culprit in ignoring a city ordinance to ensure vacant properties are maintained and secured has been ordered to comply with the local law.

Charlotte, N.C.-basedWorcester Housing Court was ordered by a Worcester Housing Court judge last week to obey the city’s vacant and foreclosing property ordinance for 1 Blodgett Place.

The city’s Department of Inspectional Services has issued orders on 124 other properties owned by Bank of America. If the bank does not comply, those cases they will be forwarded to Housing Court for adjudication.

The city has taken other banks to court and they have lost too, but none was as large as Bank of America, according to city officials. The move comes as the city tries to hold owners of vacant and foreclosed properties accountable for the condition of those properties.

“You would hope there was a sense of responsibility in these mega-institutions for the mess they all contributed to, but I gather that is asking too much,” City Manager Michael V. O’Brien said. “Look, these banks, ‘too big to fail,’ as the regulators say, got billions and billions and billions of taxpayer dollars rewarding them for their excesses and largesse, faulty lending practices and exotic financial products that collapsed our economy.”

A Bank of America spokesman wrote in an email: “Bank of America is committed to maintain properties to neighborhood standards. When we learn that a property is not being maintained, we take immediate action to remedy the situation. Bank of America works with service providers to inspect and maintain more than one million properties each month. To protect the investor’s asset, as a service to the surrounding neighborhood and to support the ultimate sale of the property to a new homeowner, the bank regularly inspects properties that are in default. We will review any information we receive from the City and work diligently with them to understand and address their concerns.”

The city ordinance requires the owner of a vacant and foreclosed property to register the property and post a $5,000 bond. For 1 Blodgett Place, a three-family off Catharine Street, Bank of America was fined $5,600 for failing to abide by court orders in a timely manner. To comply with the city ordinance for the other 124 properties, Bank of America needs to post $620,000 in bonds.

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