Evanston officials will revive the boarded-up property debate tonight when they discuss a plan to revise how the city deals with these buildings.

The plan being proposed at the Housing Commission over “board-ups,” as the city calls them, would require property owners to enclose and secure their building within 24 hours of its vacancy. The owners then would be required to register the building with the city. After 30 days of vacancy, the property would be considered condemned and the city would have the power to demolish the building.

Board-ups have been discussed irregularly since 1995, said Ald. Joseph Kent (5th). The last debate flared up a month ago.

There currently are 16 boarded-up properties in Evanston. The issue is whether the problem is the existence of board-ups or the act of tearing them down.

“They are a blight on our community,” Ald. Ann Rainey (8th) said at the April 21 meeting of the Planning and Development Committee. “A boarded-up building is an advertisement for bad people to come in and do bad things.”

Eric Sims of 725 Brummel Ave. lives next to a board-up and said he feels they make the neighborhood unsafe.

“It looks plain ugly,” Sims said. “Kids are out there ripping the boards down. They get up in there, who knows what they’re doing.”

Stan Janusz, assistant director of housing rehabilitation and property standards under the current policy, said the city deals with abandoned buildings as they learn of them, but the city’s access is limited.

Buildings often are abandoned, Janusz said, but the city leaves them alone unless a problem crops up.

Kent said he does not want the city tearing down any homes in his ward.

“Tearing these homes down would totally put the nail in the coffin of my community,” Kent said.

Kent said it is a problem when boarded-up properties are torn down and replaced by “trophy homes.”

Instead, he is proposing a short-term moratorium on teardowns in his ward. Kent said he is concerned that the physical changes hurt the character of the neighborhood. Half of the city’s boarded-up properties are in the 5th ward, as well as a third of the 2002 foreclosures.

“I don’t want the city to tear anything down,” he said. “Abandoned properties are our affordable housing.”

For a long-term solution, Kent proposes the city should purchase boarded-up properties and give them to community-housing development organizations. These organizations then could make them affordable and resell the property.

The West Side Residents’ Association is one Evanston organization dedicated to turning abandoned homes into something valuable for the community.

Association member Betty Ester, 61, said as long as abandoned properties are boarded securely, she feels they are safe. It is the developers who tear them down that scare her.

“Developers come in and change the neighborhood into something ugly,” Ester said. “You end up with a bunch of pill boxes that look nothing like the rest of the community.”

The association is trying to create a community land trust. If federally approved, the citywide organization would purchase boarded-up properties with the help of loans and government grants.

The land trust would evaluate the property on the land and make repairs necessary for it to be livable. They would then sell or rent the homes to low- or moderate-income families at a price below market rate, although the trust would continue to own the land.

“It’s a way for us to keep homes in Evanston affordable forever,” Ester said.

The Housing Commission meets at 7 p.m. tonight at the Civic Center, 2100 Ridge Ave., in room 2402.