BREWER, Maine — All of the bedroom door jambs are broken. There is water coming into the home from a leaking roof that has compromised the electrical system, and there are holes in the walls and ceilings and household debris and animal feces throughout the house.
“The neighbors said at one point this home was one of the nicest homes on the street,” Assistant City Manager James Smith said Thursday while providing a tour of 91 Longmeadow Drive, with its marble countertops and backsplashes, hardwood floors and man-cave bar in the basement.
The foreclosed Brewer house that police officers responded to complaints about many times in recent years will soon get a facelift in order to be placed on the market, Smith said.
“We’re moving forward with making repairs and selling the property,” he said.
A professional cleaner will clean the five-bedroom home, and a local contractor will be hired to fix the problems An electrician has already replaced the electrical panel and is checking the rest of the home for wiring issues to bring it up to code.
“Our goal is to bring this back [to its former glory] and get a nice family in here,” Smith said.
As part of a negotiated deal with Candice White, who stopped paying property taxes on 91 Longmeadow in 2013, leading city officials to foreclose on the property, the former owner will get some money.
White will get “the net” proceeds from the home’s sale, Smith said.
“Whatever our costs are to fix up the house, to clean it, attorneys fees” will be removed first, he said.
Brewer City Solicitor Joel Dearborn said the agreement between the city and White was signed this week.
The brown foreclosed house with white trim near the end of Longmeadow Drive is now vacant.
After White moved out in late July, city staffers came in and cut the grass and removed debris from the lawn. They also posted no trespassing signs and only allowed White back into the house with an escort.
While White and her daughters lived there, law enforcement was called to the property numerous times — 155 since 2014 — for a variety of complaints from neighbors.
At the end of July, White owed $17,298 in property taxes to Brewer. The property is valued at $230,200, with the land accounting for $27,200 of the total.
White said she purchased the home in 2012 with cash from her mother’s inheritance and moved in with her boyfriend, his daughter and her two daughters. About a year later, he died, and several months after that, “in December 2013, I suffered a debilitating stroke,” White said in a July letter to the Brewer City Council.
She apologized for the actions of her daughters and their friends, who intimidated the neighborhood for two years.
“My girls had taken complete control over our house and allowed friends to come and destroy our neighborhood and our home,” White’s letter states.
“I didn’t have the mental capacity to stop it, and my daughters didn’t have the maturity level to make different decisions,” she said later in the letter.
White declined a request for comment on Thursday.
The city notified White numerous times about her unpaid taxes and pending foreclosure over the last year, and White never attempted to pay any of the taxes, Smith said.
The city filed the first tax collector’s lien on June 17, 2014, with the Penobscot County Registry of Deeds. As the statutory 18-month deadline to pay her taxes or lose her home neared, Brewer officials sent White a certified letter that she signed for on Nov. 16, 2015, telling her she must pay her taxes or be subject to an automatic foreclosure of the property.
The 2013 taxes were not paid, and the lien matured.
Since then, White’s 2014, 2015 and first 2016 tax payments have not been paid, and there are nonpayment of taxes liens already filed for 2014 and 2015, as well as a lien for her unpaid 2015 sewer bills.
Smith said both parties have agreed that selling the house is the best way to move forward. Once the holes and other problems are fixed, a local real estate agency will list the home for sale, the assistant city manager said.
“We have a lot of work, but we want a home that is ready for a family,” Smith said. “And to let this community heal.”