Quote Originally Posted by ghettopalmetto View Post
Abandonment, while troubling, is not the *cause*, but the result.

My concern is this: The story of the past decade or so is young, educated people moving into inner cities and renovating old houses and properties. If Detroit destroys all those existing houses and buildings, then there is nothing left to renovate, yes? I mean, who is going to move into a neighborhood that has been completely destroyed [[and with public dollars, no less). Does anyone think Brooklyn [[to use one example) would have seen an influx of residents if all the rowhouses and apartment buildings had been bulldozed in favor of open prairie?
Brooklyn [[or rather a good portion of NYC in general) is actually on the other end of the spectrum where too much of it is preserved leaving very little room for new housing/development driving up prices. Also, I'm pretty sure many parts of Brooklyn have been razed and rebuilt with public housing developments. The area where the youngins are moving to is a relatively small area.

I've seen cities where houses have sat abandoned for decades. If that leads to crime [[as some suggest), then that's a policing problem, not an abandoned house problem. It's ironic, though, that the City of Detroit will exercise completely lackluster building code enforcement, then let derelict property owners off the hook by paying for a demolition. I didn't realize Detroit was so flush with cash!

Funny enough, though, even though many of these houses have been vacant and falling apart for years, if not decades, the Detroit Land Bank gives new owners a whopping six months to bring a house up to Code. That's a completely unreasonable time frame for the vast majority of would-be homeowners.

Once again, though, Detroit has to pretend that it's the only city to have ever fallen on hard times.
It seems to me people pretend that Detroit is the only city to ever demolish historical buildings.