1) Give the land an abandoned house is on to the homeowner next door if they are willing to tear down the other house. This will reduce the number of blighted homes and increase the value of the homes which are remaining.
2) Make Detroit a city of parks, if 1/4th of your land is unoccupied see if you cant get some key owners to shuffle around and build open space, low maintenance parks.
3) just give away the land, and petition the state for grants and low interest loans for people willing to dvelop it..
None of this will work if your city is not being governed well and they need a mayor like Rudy to come along and make sure no more windows get broken..
Re #1 - are most abandoned homes still owned by someone, or have they been seized by the city? If they’re bankowned ain’t a-gonna be much happening there.
However, I saw a slew of bank-owned homes for under $10k in Detroit. Perhaps offering the homeowner next door that if they buy the bank-owned sh*thole next to them they’ll get a break on their taxes a couple years.
There are entire blocks in Youngstown, Ohio’s south side where there is one home surrounded by 20 vacant lots where old abandoned homes once were.