Maxwell to Landlords: Get This Place Cleaned UP!




Commissioner Scott Maxwell went on a tear at tonight's city commission meeting about "nuisance properties" and their negligent owners saying we have to cut the grass, get the couch off the front lawn, and get the farm animals out of the backyard!

"We've got to light a fire, no pun intended, under some of these landlords' rear ends," said Maxwell, adding that he and the other commissioners get half a dozen complaints from residents of the city every day about derelict properties.

What's wrong with farm animals??

There are 16,000 properties in Lake Worth, and 13,828 households, 7,243 of which are owner-occupied and some 5,000 of which are rentals.

Many of the rental properties have out-of-town landlords, said Williams Waters, the city's community development director. Some of these, he said, are hard to reach, by phone or letter, making it difficult for Lake Worth's code enforcement department to notify property owners of code violations and, if the violations are not resolved, bring the owners before a special magistrate.

The city took the bold step of demolishing a nuisance property for the first time ever last month. It was a home on the 700 block of South Lakeside Drive that had been neglected for so long that it was actually falling apart. The lot is now cleared.