The lawns left behind when a family loses its home — wild, untamed, forgotten — present a telling symbol of the rapidly growing foreclosure problem in suburban Prince William County.
County supervisors are preparing to give maintenance crews power to mow unkempt lawns faster as the county faces more complaints of foreclosed homes damaging a neighborhood’s reputation and decreasing property values.
Inspectors cited 800 homeowners in the last two years for lax landscaping. The number of lawns the county cut in 2006 more than tripled from 30 in 2006 to 135 in 2007 because “there’s no one there,” said Michelle Casciato, chief of the neighborhood services division.
Under the current law, the county has to wait until lawns are 15 inches high at unoccupied homes to cite the property owner and begin the notification process, which could take a month and allow the situation to worsen.
The change, which could be approved next month, would set the height at 12 inches regardless of whether the property is owned.
“When a lawn becomes a field, it affects everybody,” Prince William County Executive Craig Gerhart said. “This is increasingly important, with the number of foreclosures we have been seeing.”
More than 80 percent of the county’s 1,157 foreclosures through Aug. 17 are for houses that had been bought in the last two years, before the credit bubble popped, county officials said. The tough market has sent property values dropping 14 percent countywide.
The proposed change “makes it clearer for citizens and reduces the aggravation when we know the property is vacant, we know it’s going to grow another two inches and can’t cut it yet,” Casciato said.
The number of complaints would have been much higher if frustrated neighbors had not been taking their concerns into their own hands by mowing the lawns in the homeowner’s absence, a tactic county officials don’t recommend.
