After 13 years and several attempts, state Rep. Don Walko, D-Allegheny, finally got his blight bill passed.

A House concurrence vote Wednesday sent the Abandoned and Blighted Property Conservatorship Act to Gov. Ed Rendell for signing. It would grant neighborhood advocates and Common Pleas Court judges authority to take unoccupied properties whose owners have allowed them to become eyesores.

The bill won the fight with property rights advocates by making stipulations to protect owners, Mr. Walko said, "but I think we have a meaningful tool. We are telling people, 'Your right to private ownership ends when you let it become abandoned, blighted and rat-infested.' We will err on the side of the neighborhood."

Currently, taxpayers have no option beyond seeking a court order to force an owner to correct a violation or face being fined for failing to correct it. If an owner can't be found and his property isn't condemnable, the neighborhood just has to live with the problem -- raccoons scratching around inside, the sky showing through the roof, plywood over the windows and a stoop overgrown with weeds.

Here's a possible scenario under the new act, House Bill 2188. A neighborhood's community development corporation has a rehabilitation plan for three houses on a block and owns two of them, but the owner of the third resists selling and does nothing to fix up his building.

If it has been vacant for a year, not marketed in two months, owned by the same person for more than six months and is not in foreclosure, the group can petition the court to appoint a conservator to take it.

A typical conservator would be a community development corporation, and the conservator would do the rehabilitation, gaining a lien for its investment that would fold into the resale cost. Money could come from the state, the Urban Redevelopment Authority or any other agency that currently helps community development corporations rehabilitate and build homes, Mr. Walko said.

The owner has to be informed of a petition and has 30 days to respond. Petitioners are required to enumerate existing code violations, submit cost estimates for the building's rehabilitation and name possible funding sources. A judge would assign a conservator to shepherd properties into reuse.

"It's certainly an issue in our neighborhood," said Terry Doloughty, president of the Polish Holl Civic Association. "Someone does a beautiful renovation but is stuck beside a place that's been abandoned for 10 years, owned by a corporation with a mailbox or a dead person."

But the bill's capacity might be over the heads of groups like his, he said.

"Once you take possession of the property, you are going to be liable for it, and, hopefully, you have a plan in place and funding and volunteers. For CDCs that do property, it will work out well, but I don't think we have the wherewithal or finances" to make much use of it.

"If a fund were associated with it, it could be put to work citywide and possibly generate a profit."

Rick Swartz, executive director of the Bloomfield-Garfield Corp., said, "We often have problems with absent-site owners who don't want to make any serious investment in their property, and allow it to sit vacant while they look for the market to improve. But in many neighborhoods, it's precisely this speculative activity that fuels disinvestment by surrounding owners, which, in turn, slows or stops progress altogether. I hope the effect of the bill is a message to those who want to be in the investment "game" in older neighborhoods that sitting on property for lengthy periods of time without any real plan to improve it could subject you to some real pressure from the powers that be, including the community.

Several states and cities have versions of conservatorship laws. Chicago's Troubled Building Initiative has a $55 million fund supported by numerous banks.

Jon Castelli, executive director of the House Urban Affairs Committee, said Mr. Walko's bill had almost unanimous support, in part because it moderated previous wording -- such as conservatorship over receivership -- and exempts eyesores that are occupied. It passed the House in a concurrence vote after Senate modifications, 196-0.

"When he first introduced it, it seemed radical," said Mr. Castelli. "But now that blight is such an issue in so many communities, the time has come."