Re: The city (Philly)
HA! Philly has been like that since its founding! I grew up in Ardmore, burb of philly where dad and mom still live. Went to Drexel in west philly 20 years ago and it was like that then. In the early 1900's there was an elevated stone train track into the city and it was a huge mess.<br /><br />There were abandoned buildings and homes near campus that parents wanted to renovate because they could tear down the building rebuild use it for their kids 5 years at drexel and then sell it for a profit.<br /><br />The city then passed a law saying you had to "Refurbish" not tear buildings of a certain age. Well that killed all of the rebuilding projects in a heart beat so these empty shells just stood there and still stand there. <br /><br />The cities really are in a jam, look at New Orleans same issues. To rebuild the house costs 200k but the house is a hood that you can only get 50k for the house even new, so the lot just sits there, too expensive to tear down or rebuild. The owners are paying VERY little in taxes because it is a "vacant" lot. <br /><br />The city cant do much because if they DO improve the hood the home prices go up - as well as the taxes - which drives out the poor people who voted them into office in the first place. <br /><br />New Orleans is struggling with this as well - homeowners who do not have enough insurance to rebuild OR no insurance to rebuild or remove the debris. <br /><br />Most are african-american so everyone just says they are trying to "force" out the black man - when in reality the city council people realize that if they dont get the place cleaned up NO ONE will come back at all and they will lose their city.<br /><br />The only "real" solution that I have heard is that they pool together the FEMA/insurance/state funds and give each home owner in New orleans 200k for their house/lot, then the city turns around and auctions off the lots to builders who will clean up and rebuild. The idea is that the builders will only be paying 25k for the lot and they will rebuild the home at a price that the market will bear. <br /><br />Then the homeowners get to decide where to live with the 200k. <br /><br />I knew some people who also would buy older homes in the city and get great tax breaks and other things - same issue, house was too expensive to fix and sell - but if they got breaks here and there you could do it. The biggest problem they had was attracting other people to do the same thing, which meant other 'white" people with $$. Which for a home is a tough thing to do is to put time and effort into a place that may actually go down in value.<br /><br />tomatolord
<br />It looks like a demilitarized zone