Finally, demo dollars for neighborhoods

The city has spent nearly $50 million since 2004 demolishing buildings owners have left to rot, but weak collection efforts have largely left taxpayers stuck with the bill, Detroit officials acknowledge. But Mayor Dave Bing says he's about to get tough, promising to sue walkaway owners or sic collection agencies on them. After years of failing even to send bills for costs, the city soon plans to begin filing suits against the owners of the 40 most expensive demolitions of the past six years, mostly apartments or businesses, which run more than $25,000 apiece.

Read more: http://detnews.com/article/20100118/...#ixzz0cyORyY1i

All the more reason not to demolish.

Fines for blighted conditions effectively taxed the existence of blight, which made sense, and left an incentive for the owner of to remove the condition by fixing it. How and why would they pay up now that the city has demolished their building? Further, under what legal theory? Perhaps the Michigan statutes are wildly different than what I've read about elsewhere, but blight demolitions follow seizures by eminent domain wherein the city acquires title. These landowners may indeed have to pay old, unpaid blight fines, but why do they have to pay for what the city did after it took ownership of their property?

I found this little blurb pretty interesting:

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City: No plans to raze depot

Mayor Dave Bing may be promising to bill owners for demolition costs of blighted buildings, but his get-tough plans don't extend to the city's most notorious eyesore: the Michigan Central Depot.
His predecessor, interim Mayor Kenneth Cockrel Jr., in April planned to use $3.6 million in federal stimulus money to raze the massive station and bill its owner, Manuel "Matty" Moroun.
But, nine months later, those plans are shelved.
Karla Henderson, the city's director of Buildings and Safety Engineering, said there are no plans to use stimulus money on the building. She said she's "aware of proposals for renovations that the owner is considering" and hopes "it happens quickly."
Days after Cockrel's announcement, agents for Moroun announced they wanted to sell the structure to the U.S. General Services Agency and convert it to a base for Homeland Security and Border Patrol in Detroit. Phil Frame, a spokesman for Moroun, said the owners are "still talking to a number of people about using a portion of the depot," including the federal government and the state of Michigan.
"We want to get it done as quickly as we can," Frame said. "There is no reason to sit and wait for a long period of time. But these things take time."
The last Amtrak train left the 18-story station in 1988. Once a destination for generations of immigrants, it has since been plundered by scavengers. For 20 years, Moroun and city officials have proposed reusing it as a hotel, casino, lofts, mall and police headquarters. None of the plans has gone anywhere.


Read more: http://detnews.com/article/20100118/...#ixzz0czJlwpfK

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Originally Posted by Mackinaw

...Further, under what legal theory? Perhaps the Michigan statutes are wildly different than what I've read about elsewhere, but blight demolitions follow seizures by eminent domain wherein the city acquires title. These landowners may indeed have to pay old, unpaid blight fines, but why do they have to pay for what the city did after it took ownership of their property?

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Let me preface this by saying that I am NOT an attorney, but I do know [[and perhaps some attorney can provide proper citation) that the City does not acquire the title to a property in order to demolish the structure. The owner retains ownership of the land and the demolition costs become a lien on the property if unpaid by the owner. The City may, however, acquire title if the property goes through proper tax foreclosure procedures for unpaid property taxes.

Believe it or not, there are owners who pay the taxes but still allow the structure to rot and the property to be overrun with weeds, trash, rodents, etc leaving neighbors feeling rather frustrated and endangering our children's lives who must walk past this filth and destruction just to go to school -- can you tell how much I despise irresponsible land owners?! :mad: