Looking at what happened to the once-great City of Detroit, I wonder why city governments seem so passive about urban decay?
Suppose you live in a neighborhood, and somebody abandons the house next door. It gradually becomes a haunt for drug users and homeless people. Why can’t the city take the property and sell it?
Or, tear it down and sell the land?
My theory is that urban decay feeds on itself-if Detroit had done this right away, maybe it would have avoided the massive out-migration that continues to this day.
So, why can’t city governments seize abadoned property quickly?
I can imagine he aggarvation felt by someone who keeps his house up and wants to stay in the neighborhood-only to see the neighborhood decaying around him.
Google the following terms:
Land bank
Community Development Block Grant
Brownfields remediation
Neighborhood Stabilization Program
Insert the name of your city at your convenience.
Springfield (as do all cities, I suppose) has this problem. A hulking wreck of a house sits decaying, attracting vermin, homeless people, and crack dealers. The city sends the owner an ultimatum: bring the house up to code within 180 days, or we tear it down and send you the bill. So on day 179 the owner sells the home to his brother in law for $1. Now the new owner is on the hook for taxes, bringing it up to code, etc. He has 180 days. Guess what he does on day 179?
So what’s the city to do? And even if the owner tells the city to fuck off and go ahead and demolish his house, the city knows there’s no chance of recovering the money spent demolishing it. And there are far more pressing matters requiring the city’s budget attention than decaying houses, what with all the layoffs, etc…
Where is the money going to come from to pay for all of it? It takes a decent property tax base to fund the city officials who have to do the legwork and paperwork. Most important of all, if the city doesn’t know about an abandoned building (and if they do it’s often until past the point of no return), how do you start the process in the first place?
If only someone were to provide a list of federal programs that do just that…
In most cases it’s because even abandoned property belongs to somebody. The government can’t just roll up, declare it’s taking a building for the greater good, and tear it down. There are a number of due process steps involved in attempting to identify the owner and have him maintain his property if possible.
Here in Minneapolis a vacant building can be seized and torn down if the police document that it was being used to deal or use drugs in, but that’s always the last resort. Cities want a building to hopefully someday start paying taxes again, rather than costing the city legal and demolition expenses, and then starting over as a empty lot, the least taxable of all properties. I’ve heard that in Detroit’s case, the city literally can’t afford the cost of tearing down all the condemned properties.
if the drug users were not in that particular abandoned building, would they still be in Detroit? If the thugs don’t hang out on the street corner, are they still living in the same neighborhood as the next candidate for “out migration”?
My point is, don’t try fighting the symptoms, look at the root of the problem. People are not fleeing because of conditions of buildings, they are fleeing because of the sort of people who they find living either in their neighborhood or in the neighborhood next to them.
Besides, to get something done, for good or ill, you need some competence and drive. You need to be a “can do” sort of guy. As opposed to a Detroit civil servant or politician.
I think Detroit is in a unique position among other US cities w/r/t its abandoned property problem. What they should do is offer a tax forgiveness program- take the owners off the hook for back taxes if they surrender the property to the city. Then the city gives the property to a third party for free if they demolish it, and then they pay no taxes on the lot unless and until something is built on it.
No city can. Here in Indianapolis, there’s a strong push for demolishing the abandoned buildings that can’t be salvaged, and restoring the ones that can via the land bank. But it’s a slow process, and there are more demolisions on the schedule that could ever be completed in the near future.
One thing that Detroit is considering is to get certain residents to switch properties and move to new homes. This is for cases where there is one or two occupied homes in an entire city block. In order to save the cast of providing services to that whole block for just one customer, they’re proposing free land swaps for residents.
Oops
When I first moved into Logan Square in Chicago, there were many abandoned buildings housing crackheads and whores. If these had been razed, in a few years we would’ve had vacant lots instaed of buildings which were rehabbed and now are full of Yuppies.
Even if a city takes posession of a property it still costs to tear it down. Look at Chicago they are forcing employees to take unpaid leave. They can’t afford to pay anyone to knock it down.
If they sell it, as another poster noted, it gets sold for a song and used as collateral to buy another building in a nicer place. Well at least that’s how it used to work. Now you can’t sell a lot but it will go back that way again.
Even in suburbs you see that. Look at places in suburban Chicago, like Arlington Heights and Schaumburg. They have abandoned store fronts all over. Why? It’s easier to relocated a few miles away and build from scratch. In the burbs cars are king and it doesn’t hurt much to have people drive a few more miles.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Actually the relevant point is the 5th Amendment
(emphasis added.)