City forced to foot bill for abandoned, burned home

The city of Pocatello is facing one bizarre facelift problem – an abandoned home on the 2200 block of Satterfield, left untouched since a fire destroyed most of it back in February.

The homeowner, gone.

“If we don’t do something with it, this building will sit like this for, who knows? Indefinitely,” the city’s Building Officer Lynn Transtrum said.

Normally, when something such as this happens, it’s up to the homeowner to foot the bill for repairs. However, in this case, the homeowner skipped town leaving all of her belongings and no trace of how anyone could get ahold of her.

Since she left, police say squatters inhabited the home before it burned.

Transtrum said not only has the homeowner disappeared, but there are no insurance companies who stepped forward to deal with the issue.

Transtrum said this issue now falls under a code for an ‘abatement of dangerous buildings’ and now the city needs to find a way to secure it from the public.

“We hate to do this sort of thing but we owe our citizens something when we have a building like this and we can’t get any assistance from an owner or an insurance company,” Transtrum said. “We feel obligated to step up and at least secure the building to keep it from being a danger and an eyesore.”

This past week the city council voted to give the house a facelift, but to not exceed $20,000 in repair costs.

Transtrum said the goal is to not come anywhere close to that dollar figure.

“The city just wants to do what it takes to secure the building and make it somewhat esthetically compatible with the neighborhood.”

He added, although the situation is strange, they’ve seen this before in other areas across town.

A similar situation happened two years ago to a home near Irving Jr. High. Also, the dilapidated, former Banner Motel on Main St. which ended up being demolished. Now, a new Burger King fast food restaurant sits in its place.

He said after they fix-up the house, they’ll file a special assessment against it, which will act as a lien . So, the city will be able to get that money back under one of two circumstances: if it ever goes delinquent in property tax sale, or if the house is ever up for sale.

Transtrum said he is now in the process of finding a cost estimate, which he will then report back to the council to make a decision.