Speculators, investors or vultures? Detroit land owners.

[Detroit2MeetU]

You should be thanking these guys. How else would the city keep its beloved ruins...The entire Ruin Porn industry would vanish...

No more CNN. No more urban exploring.

[Hypestyles]

there needs to be a walkable nature preserve in Detroit, more bike paths, etc... The city should be more aggressive in staying on top of what's vacant and recently vacated, what's behind in taxes and how much, who owns lots and structures, those that are constantly in bad shape, and aggressively apply steep fines and seizure wherever legally possible.

[fryar]

Here's another problem with these land speculators - they hinder progress. Example here: http://www.google.com/maps?f=q&sourc...283.91,,0,8.04

Guess who owns this land among mostly new houses? Our buddy, Mr. Kelly.

That's the lot featured in the Problem Solvers report linked to earlier. Nice find!

Check out this gem from 2009: http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/dpp/news...alk_Away_Stimu

Mike G. Kelly needs to make money off those properties some how.

Which, again, that was a tax scam in which Mike Kelly hired some dude to give seminars on buying abandoned properties in Detroit and then walking away from them in order to collect the $8,000 first time home buyer credit. They didn't explain, in the program, how that was supposed to work, since the credit was limited to 10% of the purchase price, but one may assume fraud was in play.

To reiterate,

Why isn't this guy in jail?

[GOAT]

What Kelly's lawyer, Mr. Lefvre states is true for some speculators [[ie; speculators are better at keeping their property in good standard) it is obviously the complete opposite with his vulture of a client.

I am quite shocked that Detroit is owed $41 million in blight tickets and yet hasn't or can't recoup these costs. Imagine what that $41 million could do for Detroit right now. This should be a priority for Detroit especially in light of the downsizing of the city.