By Jeff Swiatek and Mark Nichols

Jan Williams sits on his front porch in the 900 block of North Concord Street and waves at a real-life ghost town.

Nobody waves back.

All but three of the houses across the street are empty. Same for the two-story house next door and the one-story home south of that. Twelve of the 22 houses on Williams’ street are boarded up.

“They need to tear up all that,” said Williams, a mechanic on disability who’s lived on the block for years. “Nobody in ’em.”

Williams’ neighborhood ** reflects a growing housing vacancy problem in Indianapolis — one that has reached a level never before seen here, according to an Indianapolis Star analysis of the latest vacant housing data from the U.S. Postal Service.

About 9 percent of houses in Marion County are vacant. That’s about 5,000 houses, most of them five minutes from Downtown.

Unquestionably, it is a problem for the folks who live in the 900 block of North Concord and so many other blocks across the city, where people must deal with the blight, the sharp reduction in home values and the eerie feeling of living among boarded-up homes.

The problem extends well beyond their own neighborhoods, to the pocketbooks of all Marion County residents.

Abandoned homes mean unpaid property taxes. In Marion County, taxpayers pick up $73 million in unpaid bills, much of which is attributed to long-gone homeowners. In the 900 block of Concord alone, more than $46,000 in delinquent taxes are due.

Abandoned houses also lower the values of the homes around them, which means another reduction in the property taxes collected by the county. That shortfall has to be made up by others, and the insurance rates soar for the people left in the neighborhood.

And there are other practical costs.

Taxpayers pay for boarding up the houses, about $75 a window; cutting the grass, about $100 or more per lot; and removing illegally dumped debris, a few hundred dollars for each load.

Sometimes, the home is deemed beyond repair and dangerous to the neighborhood. When that happens, it is torn down. Marion County spends $2.5 million annually for demolition costs.

A desolate neighborhood

Those who live amid the desolation pay an additional price.

The 900 block of Concord, part of the Haughville neighborhood on the Westside, is being overtaken by nature. Poison ivy curls over sidewalks. Raccoons scamper nightly on sagging roofs. Feral cats thrive.

“This is a lost world up here,” says Bonnie Mobley, a McDonald’s restaurant worker who watches the raccoons from the home she rents on the block.

What happened here was exacerbated by the mortgage crisis and the economic downtown. But it also is the byproduct of years of neglect and urban decay, fueled by drugs, gangs, crime and the desire of many to get out.

Banks and investors, many of them from out of state, own some of the properties on the block. A few are listed under the names of people who say they’re not actually the owners.

Two of the vacant homes on the block are linked to mortgage scams. In most cases of fraud, mortgages are obtained for far more than the house is worth. The owner then pockets the money and walks away from the house.

One, at 915 N. Concord, was purchased as part of an investment scheme run by Robert A. Penn, who pleaded guilty last month in federal court to mortgage fraud involving hundreds of area houses.

Another, at 945 N. Concord, is owned by AF Properties, a seller of numerous houses to Preston Forte III, a Chicago investor charged with fraud and theft in mortgage default cases uncovered last year. Those alleged scams involved more than 200 Haughville houses.

Past-due property taxes are owed on both houses. If left unpaid, the houses should proceed to a sheriff’s sale within a year. After that, the houses should be freed up for repurchase, though the process can take years.

A failed investment

Just five of the properties on the block are locally and privately owned.

One of the private investors, William Wood, bought a double in the 900 block of Concord about nine years ago for $20,000 as a way to bring in some rental income in his retirement.

“Buying it was a big mistake,” said Wood, 70. “It’s been a losing proposition. The main thing I’d love to do is sell it.”

Wood has seen about 50 tenants come and go. Some he evicted for using drugs. Many he kicked out for being deadbeats. He estimates tenants have shortchanged him by about $30,000 in rent over the years.

“It’s just a waste of time” to go to small claims court to collect the back rent, he said, because the tenants can’t be found or they don’t have money to pay.

Construction worker Arnulfo Guerrero is another private owner, having recently received a one-story house on the block in exchange for $13,000 in back wages. He tore the house down and is slowly rebuilding on the foundation.

His house is one of five rental homes on the block that were bought in 1999 by Americo Flores, an owner of Mexican restaurants on the Southside and in Greenfield.

Flores said he lost all five homes to foreclosure after his tenants, mostly people from Mexico, left the country in the economic downturn after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“Everybody went back to Mexico,” Flores said. “It was a big nightmare. I couldn’t afford to pay the mortgages on those homes.”

Skepticism reigns

If Flores’ nightmare has become Guerrero’s American dream, there is skepticism.

“He’s got a serious uphill battle,” Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department Patrolman Thomas Bordenkecher said.

The patrolman, who has driven the blocks for years, fears the construction site will be robbed of anything of value.

There is no escaping the neighborhood’s well-earned legacy of crime, which pushed people out and resulted in the abandoned homes.

The homes became magnets for more crime — easy hide-outs for drug dealers, users, gang members and prostitutes.

Shootings have left bullet holes in Wood’s roof, in a refrigerator and stove — and in one of his tenants, who was on the front porch at the time. A thief once made off with all of the copper pipes in the house. Wood replaced them with plastic pipe.

Over the years, he’s replaced three stolen refrigerators, two stoves, three smashed back doors and about 30 windows. “They just break ’em out,” he said.

But therein is also one of the great ironies: Crime actually can begin to go down in such neighborhoods because there are fewer people and items of value.

“By not being full, that might be a blessing,” said Woodrow Spiller, 62, who has lived on the block for half of his life. “It’s a better neighborhood. It’s straightened out a lot.”

What the future holds

The trick is overcoming the reputation and attracting private investment — or at least inspiring hope that might convince the city the neighborhood is worth saving.

In other areas of Indianapolis, Marion County’s Unsafe Building program has started revitalization via a wrecking ball. Last year, 536 properties were torn down.

That could be the fate for the 900 block of Concord, as well. Though not necessarily.