Posted on 07/03/2014 5:52:55 AM PDT by Gunpowder green
Chicago is practically giving away land: vacant lots for just $1 each. The catch? To buy one, you must already own a home on the same block.
Like many U.S. cities, Chicago has struggled with what to do with a growing number of empty lots in the wake of the foreclosure crisis. Efforts to develop affordable housing or urban farms have had some mixed results.
So Chicago officials and community development advocates hope the vacant lot program can help spark a renewal in some of the city's most blighted areas.
The City of Chicago owns close to 5,000 vacant lots in the greater Englewood area alone, and is supposed to clean up, mow and maintain them. But residents such as Asiaha Butler say the city doesn't always stay on top of the job.
"So like right now, the kids over there are just playing in the lot, they're just running," she says. "I would hope that it would be somewhere where they feel a little more safe, a little more secure, that's a little more beautified than what we see currently."
Butler says some of the lots get so overgrown that toddlers can get lost in them. They often become mini garbage dumps, or are sometimes taken over by drug dealers or gang members.
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
I also don't understand why, if these lots were overgrown and harboring danger, the neighbors haven't taken it upon themselves to clear them and report crime? Self-reliance seems strangely absent from those communities.
Get rid of Leftist policies in Chicago and you’ll see those lots worth a whole lot more than a dollar
The city is getting no tax revenue and they’re on the hook for maintaining the lot, which is beyond their capabilities. Why not allow an established home-owner (and responsible taxpayer) to take that liability off their hands and turn it back into some kind of productive (and eventually taxable) use?
You’ve got to be assuming that in the absence of leftist policies, the current population will disperse. Otherwise, it’s still going to be a mess.
I agree, except with the method. An auction would generate fair value, the system they are proposing means the city gets to decide who gets it.
you’re weird
The advantage to the city’s method - whether you or I may agree with it - is that the lots are going to an already-established local interest with presumably a history of maintaining the property they already have.
An auction would likely result in absentee ownership.
How much taxes is the city going to charge you for those $1 lots?
Location, location, location.
See, the problem is these lots are located in Chicago, in a blighted area of Chicago. Where the means to keep the blight off your newly acquired property is against the law.
With a concertina wire perimeter that’d be a real nice place.
Comminism In The Hood!
The man has ALWAYS taken the lead/
You say that like it's a BAD thing!
Do they have city water ?
Happy Birthday, Patriot
That’s nuts! It’s also a recipe for disaster, as evidenced by Detroit today.
If someone designed policies that would deliberately gut cities and render them useless, they would look remarkably like what we actually have in place.
Where is this property? (post #2)
It will happen all across the country as the desperation to fund themselves grows worse.
Yeah.. buy it for $1, then find yourself enmeshed in that rancid hellhole’s politics for a lifetime.
A quagmire is the easiest thing to enter. Exiting is the problem. No thanks.
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