Imagine if Detroit had imposed a $5000/year non-occupancy tax on those foreclosed or abandoned mansions. People would have lived in them and maintained them, instead of letting them rot.
Whereas, everyone, their dog and dead grandmother wants to live in YVR.
Detroit isn't abandoned. It just doesn't have rich people, and banks were too aggressive in their pricing of foreclosed properties. Now those properties have all rotted.
Economic waste should be severely penalized in the tax code.
The government’s obligations were made with the assumption that population (and economic) growth would continue. It did the opposite, and you simply can’t operate a business (or government) where more than half of your revenue is gone and your expenses keep rising.
Just like you wouldn’t invest in a business laden with outsized debt obligations from projections that didn’t come true, you wouldn’t want to put your name on a title to take on the obligations of a city who had lost 50%+ of its people and revenue.
Supposedly, this was attempted to be fixed in 2014’s bankruptcy rulings, so we’ll have to see if that brought the expenses in line to make it a worthwhile investment.
Unfortunately, the political machine can move slower than society needs it to and in the meantime, the infrastructure and real physical things degrade.
These houses were abandoned because they are literally worthless. Worse, they're liabilities.
To attempt to alter that is to alter the foundations upon which this nation was founded.
Public policy should be based long term vision and not as a short term band aid to specific handicaps.
A good duplex for sale in Detroit is around $20,000 now.
If it's recently empty, it's $5,000 plus back taxes.
If it's been empty for more than a couple weeks, it has already been stripped and burned once or twice and the lot has little value, plus back taxes.
The policy of the Detroit Fire Department to avoid injuries is to allow houses to burn to the ground, then bulldoze them.
The problem with living in most of Detroit is that as soon aa you leave the house to go to work or shopping, your neighbors will see you leave and attempt to break into your house. Fences, razor wire and padlocks help, but in the end it's a losing battle.
Toledo, Ohio is in worse shape than Detroit. When I was there 40 years ago, it was literally a moonscape - just house foundations visible for miles. Not sure if they rebuilt it or not.
Really? In 21st century? seems like the Wild West to me.