This story appeared in the Antelope Valley Press

Wednesday, May 6, 2009.

By JAMES RUFUS KOREN

Valley Press Staff Writer

LANCASTER - Home foreclosures and hard times have hit neighborhoods across California, but new numbers from the U.S. Postal Service and Census Bureau show Lancaster has a higher percentage of vacant houses and apartments than the rest of Southern California and Los Angeles County.

In the first quarter of 2009, 3.16% (2000) of residences in Lancaster and nearby unincorporated areas were vacant. In Southern California as a whole, 1.58% over (200,000)- are vacant.

Palmdale, too, has a higher vacancy rate than the region, but by just a sliver - 1.6% (1000) of Palmdale residences are empty.

Vacant homes are a problem the city is trying to deal with, said Jason Caudle, assistant Lancaster city manager, citing the city's program to purchase foreclosed homes and resell them to qualified buyers.

"The more vacancies we have, the less people we have in homes, the more cause for concern," he said.

Caudle said he could not pinpoint definite causes for why Lancaster has so many more vacant residences than Palmdale.

"I would assume being an older community might have an impact - we have an older housing stock," he said. "But I don't know there's any empirical date that can point to a reason for that."

While Palmdale has a lower vacancy rate, it's still easy to spot vacant residences in the city, said Mike McNeil, Palmdale's supervising code enforcement officer.

"We have two officers that that's all they do, five days a week: register vacant properties," McNeil said. "We have hundreds of houses."

He said most streets have at least a few vacant residences and that in some parts of town, like the stalled Anaverde master-planned community, five or six vacant houses could be found on every street.

Vacancies, he said, have led in some cases to vandalism. He said the city has hired a private contractor to clean up trash from lawns and to board up empty homes to prevent further vandalism.

Lancaster's vacant homes are found mostly in the central part of the city, according to the Census department and Postal Service data, which are broken into census tracts.

The Lancaster census tract with the highest percentage of vacant residences is between avenues M and K and between Sierra Highway and 10th Street West. The area, which has few single-family residences but several large apartment complexes, has a vacancy rate of 13.3% - of 2,177 dwelling units in the area, 289 are vacant.

But that area had the lowest vacancy rate in Lancaster at the beginning of 2008. In the first quarter of that year, only five residences were vacant - a vacancy rate of 0.2%.

While the apartment-rich area has many more vacant dwellings than the rest of the city - about one empty residence out of every eight - many other neighborhoods in central Lancaster have one vacant residence for every 17 or 20 residences.

Those numbers are still well above normal levels.

Every Lancaster census tract between 10th Street West and Sierra Highway has a vacancy rate higher than 4%, as do all but two neighborhoods between Sierra Highway and 40th Street East.

The west side of Lancaster has fewer vacant residences than the east side, but even so, only one census tract in the city, between avenues I and K and between 20th and 30th streets west, has a vacancy rate lower than 1%.

But while Lancaster's vacancy rate is higher than the rest of the Antelope Valley and Southern California, it is lower than its peak of 3.43%, hit in the second quarter of 2008.

The rate dropped to 2.86% by the end of 2008, but jumped again in the first part of this year.

Palmdale, with a vacancy rate close to that of the Southern California average, has 13 census tracts with vacancy rates lower than 1%.

Only two Palmdale tracts, east of 40th Street East and between Palmdale Boulevard and Avenue S, have vacancy rates at 4% or higher