Jacksonville offers amnesty program for property owners with liens

Jacksonville property owners who have accumulated thousands of dollars in liens could see all forgiven under an amnesty program approved by the City Council.

The 90-day summer program would apply only to property with administrative liens, or fines for not meeting building standards.

More than 2,400 single- and multi-family homes in the city are accruing daily fines for things such as faulty roofs, holes in walls or other types of structural damage.

In total, the unpaid fines amount to $162 million.

The program will roll out in the coming months, but details are still being finalized and applications are not yet available. In a nutshell, property owners who have liens older than six months could have the total amount forgiven as long as they prove they have fixed all their problems.

Some of the fines are as much as $250 a day and date back five years or longer. They often go unpaid while the ignored repairs lead to blight, city leaders say.

The city tried a similar amnesty program in 2006-07, forgiving up to 75 percent of administrative liens. About 90 people paid the $25 fee to apply to the program but not all received amnesty.

Some of the property owners realized they had other types of fines, such as nuisance liens, that weren’t eligible for the program. Others didn’t have the money to pay their 25 percent share of the fine.

In all, the city forgave about $270,000 worth of fines under the old program. The $90,000 that was collected was used for the Housing and Neighborhoods department’s property rehabilitation programs.

Councilwoman E. Denise Lee said the amnesty bill and others are the result of a series of meetings she’s held with city agencies, the Sheriff’s Office and the School Board to address issues of blight and crime in her district.

Lee said the additional revenue will help the city pay to clean up those sites, which many times accumulate litter, are burglarized or are used for illegal activity.

“I was adamantly against it, but the proof is there,” she said. “We have all of the facts that we don’t have the money, but if we lifted the exemption, that would help.”