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For Sale: Vacant Lots On Chicago Blocks, Just $1 Each
http://www.npr.org/2014/07/02/325803705/for-sale-vacant-lots-on-chicago-blocks-just-1-each ^

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 ...


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To: Gunpowder green

Probably there are some well-connected people who recently bought houses next to city-owned lots. This policy makes it possible for them to do what Obama did in Hyde Park when he bought the lot next to his home for a below-market price from Tony Rezko.


21 posted on 07/03/2014 6:29:23 AM PDT by Piranha (Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have - Saul Alinsky)
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To: Dallas59
Not without a couple of these...
22 posted on 07/03/2014 6:32:01 AM PDT by Syntyr (Happiness is two at low eight!)
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To: Gunpowder green

More empty lots = lower property tax revenues.

Lower property tax revenues = higher property tax rates.

Higher tax rates = more abandoned buildings.

More abandoned buildings ———> cleared structures (= more empty lots).

More empty lots = etc. ———> “death spiral”

Death spiral = Detroit.

in the end, Chicago = Detroit.

Thank you Democrats.


23 posted on 07/03/2014 6:33:33 AM PDT by Stosh
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To: Gunpowder green

What fair value? $500? It would cost more to set up an auction.


24 posted on 07/03/2014 6:35:44 AM PDT by sharkhawk (Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall.)
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To: Gunpowder green
Chicago's an amazingly friendly place. Once you buy your stake in urban pioneering, your "neighbors" will be stopping by to say "howdy."


25 posted on 07/03/2014 6:36:29 AM PDT by ScottinVA (If it doesn't include border security, it isn't "reform." It's called "amnesty.")
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To: Syntyr

I like that “friend-foe” detection system... of course, not that you’ll need it in Chicago. Everyone there is a foe.


26 posted on 07/03/2014 6:38:23 AM PDT by ScottinVA (If it doesn't include border security, it isn't "reform." It's called "amnesty.")
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To: Gunpowder green

Detroit 2.0


27 posted on 07/03/2014 6:46:01 AM PDT by Don Corleone ("Oil the gun..eat the cannoli. Take it to the Mattress.")
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To: Blood of Tyrants

You ask too many questions. (But it is the right one). Next!!


28 posted on 07/03/2014 6:49:55 AM PDT by BipolarBob (Obama - The Scandal a Week President.)
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To: Gunpowder green

“to confiscate someone’s land and award it to someone else for a dollar is Communism”

They didn’t confiscate anything. The lands were forfeited when nobody paid the property taxes.


29 posted on 07/03/2014 6:51:44 AM PDT by Boogieman
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To: Gunpowder green

There is no way I would buy an empty lot on any block if I was just going to leave it an empty lot. Wouldn’t take long for it to become a trash dump that I had to keep clean and mowed.


30 posted on 07/03/2014 7:25:58 AM PDT by Married with Children
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To: Gunpowder green
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.

My commuter train goes through Englewood into and out of Chicago daily. Trust me on this: NO ONE wants to buy a lot in Englewood. It's one of the top two or three high crime/gang-land shooting neighborhoods in Chicago. Even the people that live there don't want to live there.

31 posted on 07/03/2014 7:38:34 AM PDT by usconservative (When The Ballot Box No Longer Counts, The Ammunition Box Does. (What's In Your Ammo Box?))
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To: Gunpowder green
Self-reliance seems strangely absent from those communities.

Two words: Multi-Generational Welfare.

Need I say more?

32 posted on 07/03/2014 7:40:23 AM PDT by usconservative (When The Ballot Box No Longer Counts, The Ammunition Box Does. (What's In Your Ammo Box?))
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To: Gunpowder green

For Sale: Vacant Lots On Chicago Blocks, Just $1 Each...BUT WAIT, if you buy now, we’ll include an EXTRA lot for a total of just $1.50.*

*Property taxes and other fee’s may apply.


33 posted on 07/03/2014 8:19:00 AM PDT by RetSignman
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To: Gunpowder green

Is this an attempt to make Obama’s “purchase” of part of the Rezko property more legal?


34 posted on 07/03/2014 8:24:54 AM PDT by VanShuyten ("a shadow...draped nobly in the folds of a gorgeous eloquence.")
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To: Gunpowder green

Vacant lots, being overgrown by weeds. I would think the Greens would be ecstatic over this. Let’s return all city land to nature. Isn’t that what they want?


35 posted on 07/03/2014 8:52:26 AM PDT by Hardastarboard (Please excuse the potholes in this tagline. Social programs have to take priority in our funding.)
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To: Hardastarboard

——overgrown by weeds——

In the process you cite the plants are not weeds but the initial foothold of the coming climax botanical growth that in the area is probably forest. The process is sucession, as the plants you cite grow in future times, blackberries and or perhaps sumac and perhaps some cedar that are over
topped by the climax species...... trees. The climax forest then begins to support the undergrowth plants that thrive in the areas under trees.

That is the way moonbats reach climax


36 posted on 07/03/2014 9:01:23 AM PDT by bert ((K.E. N.P. N.C. +12 ..... Obama is public enemy #1)
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To: Gunpowder green

I once strayed too far into the wrong part of Chicago while searching for an on-ramp to the freeway. I never saw a scarier place. The whole time, I was remembering scenes from “Blackhawk Down”. You couldn’t pay me enough to live in Chicago!


37 posted on 07/03/2014 9:30:39 AM PDT by TexasRepublic (Socialism is the gospel of envy and the religion of thieves)
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To: Gunpowder green

They’d have to pay me 6 figures to buy a lot in Englewood.


38 posted on 07/03/2014 9:49:37 AM PDT by Lurker (Violence is rarely the answer. But when it is it is the only answer.)
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