North Charleston, SC - Charleston County is working to keep home values up by making sure it can keep them up to code.

Tedder Sstreet is part of a North Charleston neighborhood. The road is lined with mostly brick single family homes, but one stands out.

“I don’t know. It don’t look like a house,” neighbor Lester Johnson said.  “It’s got tarps all over it.”
 
Neighbors all talk about the home, boarded up and nearly hidden behind shrubs. Charleston County officials say its breaking several health and safety codes, but they can't do much about it, because of a technicality.

“You’ll have an area, where one house is in the city, next door its in the county, wasn’t annexed in, so one group of folks is living up to standards another group is not having to,” Charleston County Councilman Elliot Summey said.

The Tedder Street home is in an area county officials call a donut hole, unincorporated area, and that's why Summey says homes around the county are slipping through the cracks and ultimately hurting neighborhoods.

“It affects the property values for those folks and the quality of life,” Summey said.

Summey is hoping to change that. Currently, state law doesn't let the county charge the homeowner or place a lien on the home, but cities can, so county council will ask the cities to enforce the codes.

“We see this as good government, being able to keep people on the same street, in the same block, living to the same standard,” Summey said.

All of the cities have to sign off on the change and county council also has to approve it.

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