Second in a series

POSTVILLE - Peer south down the 200 block of Oak Drive, a quiet neighborhood of neatly kept lawns in the eastern half of town, and "For Sale" signs dot nearly half of the street's 12 homes.

The boarded up house on the corner is not for sale, but that's because a fire destroyed it last winter.

In the last week, each new day in Postville has brought a new "For Sale" sign. Approximately 30 percent of the town's 632 residential homes are on the market, several town leaders estimate.

Many are rental properties owned by landlords who have filed for bankruptcy protection because of a dearth of tenants since an immigration raid a year ago at Agriprocessors, the town's kosher meatpacking plant.

"Anybody that would tell you that (Postville) is in recovery, that's not true. We're holding on by our fingernails," said Trevor Seibert, a landlord who owns several businesses in town. "We certainly have the will, and everybody's fighting really hard, but it's not good."

A town that once boasted 2,300 residents and a bustling downtown that extended down a second main street has struggled to cope with the sudden loss of hundreds of workers, most of them Mexican and Guatemalan, at the plant - about a quarter of the town's pre-raid population.

Postville now receives a fraction of the $95,000 in monthly water and sewer fees from 860 residential accounts. With income slowing to a trickle, the City Council voted last year to stop payments to the federal government on a costly water treatment plan purchased for Agriprocessors.

The deal was for the kosher plant to reimburse the city for much of the cost, but the company has not paid a single bill since September, leaving Postville hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

Empty storefronts and dusty windows break up a once vibrant downtown. Businesses that catered to the town's Latino population have been hardest hit. Most closed last summer.

At Sabor Latino, a Mexican restaurant and grocery store, the owner installed pool tables a month ago where hundreds of pounds of fresh produce and groceries once lined the aisles.

One pool cue's length away from the tables sit a few baskets of tomatoes, jalapenos and chile poblanos in a refrigerated display. The owner cut staff by more than half and found a new revenue stream thanks to billiards: Beer sales.

But it's not enough to make up for the income hundreds of Latinos buying groceries every week used to produce.

"It's very, very slow," said Angelina Gonzalez, a Sabor Latino employee.

Homeowners, the group perhaps most crucial to and most invested in the community's future, face abandoned homes and a declining population.

Brian and Jane Gravel know they might fare better in Flint, Mich., or playing the stock market in a deep recession, but they need to sell their home on Oak Drive. Taking a break from cooking dinner, Jane Gravel explained why she and her husband, principal of Postville High School, put their house on the market.

"We're going to need some more room soon," she said, pointing to her pregnant belly. "Now we're afraid we won't be able to sell our home."

Home prices have not yet plummeted because few have found buyers in the last 12 months.

Property taxes on many properties actually went up this year because, during the first five months of 2008, 23 homes sold for higher than their assessed values, said Ann Burckart, Allamakee County assessor.

After the May 12 raid, only three or four homes sold, she said. So the median home price, pushed up by sales in the year's early months, went up.

"Their market has pretty well stagnated. What I'm watching for is sales to start selling for less than assessed value. When that happens, I will have to adjust my values. But everyone is looking for it a year earlier than I can make it," she said.

That's little consolation to Seibert, the landlord, who owns several dozen rental units and took over management of 73 homes from Nevel Properties, Agriprocessors owners' bankrupt rental company.

Seibert saw his property taxes spike just when he needed a financial lifeline the most. Rental occupancy is at 60 percent, and his other businesses - a laundromat, an ice cream parlor, a construction business and a cabinet shop - barely scrape by.

The other major landlord in town, Gabay Menachem, owns 127 rental units through his company, GAL Investments. He has not made a mortgage payment for months. The bank won't foreclose, he said, so he keeps managing them in what feels like a losing battle: Tenants occupy only 25 percent of his units.

A major obstacle in renting or selling properties, the landlords said, is the sometimes severe damage former plant workers left behind when they left town as quickly as they arrived last summer as Agriprocessors struggled to find employees after the raid.

Seibert estimates he spends an average of $3,000 repairing the homes. Some are destroyed beyond his financial ability to repair, so they waste away unoccupied.

To show what they are up against, Menachem said, a home at 352 Williams St. is available for inspection. The door is unlocked because he deemed the building uninhabitable.

At the entrance, used latex gloves and face masks sit on the banister. A rank smell of cat feces and urine, combined with the putrid smell of rotting meat in the kitchen, overwhelm the senses.

Tenants left in such a hurry they left a cat trapped inside, and pile of junk about 10 feet wide in the living room. The top floor is uninhabitable. Cat feces in various stages of decay leave little open space to walk on.

"You just get tired. Some days, it's like you're alive, but you're not," Menachem said.