Ghost towns

[Liberal_in_LA]

http://washingtonindependent.com/33833/amid-distressed-homes-communities-struggle-to-keep-up

Amid Distressed Homes, Communities Struggle to Keep Up

In Atlanta, a neighborhood revitalized in the 1990s as part of the city’s Olympic bid has been scarred again by vacant and abandoned homes, undoing years of progress. In Washington D.C.’s struggling Anacostia community, decades of work to rebuild and reinvest are being lost to blight brought on by foreclosures. In Detroit, speculators inspired by late night infomercials and eBay auctions buy foreclosed properties in bulk over the Internet, creating a class of absentee landlords with little interest in rebuilding neighborhoods.

Abandoned and vacant foreclosed homes rapidly piling up in neighborhoods like these around the country are serving as symbols of the secondary damage caused by the foreclosure crisis — a catastrophe felt on the ground but still unseen by Washington. While Treasury Department officials and lawmakers look the other way, communities with shrinking resources are mostly on their own to deal with the blight and drag on property values caused by staggeringly high numbers of empty homes left behind.

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A house that might sell in Detroit for as little as $10,000 still would command rent of $700 a month or more, because the rental market hasn’t collapsed yet, Mallach said. Speculators can collect that rent, while spending very little on minimal repairs, and within three years they’ll get their money back with a nice profit. Then, having taken all they can out of the property, they walk away. The house is “exhausted,” in further decline, and left to sell again for even less or to sit empty.

Speculation has gotten so out of hand that there are some neighborhoods in Detroit where every single house is owned by a speculator, Mallach said.


A row of boarded-up houses in Detroit. (Flickr: bbcworldservice)

[Mithreal]

1. And the homeless population continues to grow. nt

[Skidmore]

2. We need a squatters revolution.

Just sit in them and don't move. Concentrate on building industry and employment in the area. Forget property for now. If the owners can't pay for them and the banks don't want them back, then there are plenty of people who could use homes and could participate in building and renewing communities.

[formercia]

3. On the positive side

If the speculators pay property tax, it's much needed revenue for the cities. A worse situation would be abandonment with no revenue and the cities required to manage the properties.

[underpants]

4. Expect this to get some coverage this week-the NCAA Final Four is at Ford Field

but a lot of the coverage will be condescending amusement of how terrible Detroit *cough* is

[Quantess]

5. Interesting.