MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Thursday, it wasn't attorneys, but University of Memphis law students who filed 15 lawsuits against blighted and neglected properties in Shelby County Environmental Court.
It is part of a partnership between the city and U of M in an effort to clean up thousands of vacant properties across Memphis.
The group said they’re getting results many Memphians have been calling for.
“They don't do anything to the owners and the property just keeps going until it just falls down or gets burned down,” said North Memphis resident Roy Brownlee, voicing his frustration with absentee property management.
In the three years since moving to the neighborhood, Brownlee said the house at 2119 Hunter Avenue (near Chelsea Avenue) has stood empty and is falling into deeper disrepair.
“I keep my yard up,” he said. “So why can’t everybody else do the same?”
Brownlee said the whole area is full of neglected homes, with many becoming targets for squatters and illegal dumping.
“Especially when it's cold out and they might accidentally burn them down because they're trying to keep warm,” he said, clarifying that multiple homes did catch fire during the winter.
Rebecca Sledge said another crumbling house on Henderson St. in her North Memphis neighborhood caught fire in early March.
“The city needs to do something about it because it can cause a hazard like that fire,” Sledge said. “It could have spread.”
Both of those properties were among lawsuits filed by members of the Neighborhood Preservation Clinic Thursday. Law students in the program file public nuisance actions for the city, under the supervision of faculty and licensed staff attorneys.
And they don’t need to wait around for absentee owners.
“Because this lawsuit is filed against the property itself, and that property is in Memphis, even if the owner never appears, whether they’re living or not, unresponsive, we can still go forward,” said Daniel Schaffzin, U of M Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Neighborhood Preservation Clinic.
Since 2019, the group said close to 60 percent of their cases resulted in the owner either fixing the problem or paying to demolish the building altogether.
Anthony Self, a Memphis native, was the law student who filed the case against the Hunter Avenue House.
“Just seeing some of the places, some of the homes on some of the streets where I played as a child…The goal is to have [them] be used for [their] original purpose,” Self said.
The Neighborhood Preservation Clinic has been filing these types of cases since it began in 2015, submitting nearly 1,800 lawsuits that resulted in close to 1,500 properties being cleaned up.
