What do you do when abandoned, saggy, unkempt houses and tangled, weedy empty lots are interlaced with the well cared-for homes and yards in a neighborhood?

Kenton County is considering selling such properties in Latonia Lakes to neighbors, after foreclosing on them.

It’s a concept that Covington has embraced with a pilot program called the Covington Community Development Initiative. The program started last year, and by December, the city had agreements with nine “community developers” to purchase 18 abandoned or vacant properties.

“Some are residents,” said J. Christian Dennery, a Covington city attorney. “They’re trying to expand their current footprint.” Others are residential real estate developers and still others are community organizations such as Covington Great Neighborhoods, who want to create development hot-spots in the city.

Kenton County is exploring various solutions to the issue in Latonia Lakes, but all are just concepts at this point, said Kenton County Attorney Stacy Tapke.

“Many of these properties have unpaid taxes,” Tapke said.  “If we foreclose, the county could end up owning the property. You want to make sure there’s some party that would be interested in buying the property. We are working with the idea of identifying potential buyers.”

The county attorney’s office prepared a presentation for Kenton Fiscal Court, which includes what was tentatively called the Neighborhood Purchase Program.

The idea is to have the county attorney’s office foreclose on abandoned properties with delinquent tax liens when a neighbor is willing to accept ownership of a property. The up-front cost to the county would be about $2,000 per parcel. After the foreclosure, the county would sell the property to the neighbor at an agreed-upon price.

If there are prospective buyers who want to fix up a structure or tear it down to acquire a bigger yard, it could help spruce up Latonia Lakes, Tapke said.

Currently the county has 43 such “unimproved” parcels, consisting of 15 structures or homes and 28 empty lots, said Susan Topmiller, a spokeswoman for the Kenton County Attorney’s Office. For a neighborhood with 141 residences, that means about 25 percent of the structures of Latonia Lakes is vacant. And the county has acquired about $50,000 in unpaid taxes on the properties.

Many of the properties’ owners are deceased, and no family member has claimed the property, Tapke said. So no one takes care of the property or pays taxes, and that eventually leaves the ugly spot in the neighborhood.

Tapke said the county also would consider selling properties to others who have an interest. The neighbor sale is just one idea.

In Covington, Dennery said prospective buyers were not hard to come by.

The city acquired an initial list for its first 18 properties of 60 potential buyers and whittled it down to nine, he said. Some wanted to purchase clusters of the abandoned sites and structures and others, one property.

“We’ve come to the agreement (to purchase) with potential buyers before we bring the actions,” Dennery said. Foreclosure dates are coming, with the majority of the properties expected to be put up for sale in August,.

He said that in urban Covington, the concept has proven highly successful.

“It’s really interesting to see that these abandoned and vacant properties are actually very much wanted,” Dennery said. “By designating a program, we have a funnel now where we can fill that demand.”