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 ...
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.
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.
What fair value? $500? It would cost more to set up an auction.
I like that “friend-foe” detection system... of course, not that you’ll need it in Chicago. Everyone there is a foe.
Detroit 2.0
You ask too many questions. (But it is the right one). Next!!
“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.
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.
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.
Two words: Multi-Generational Welfare.
Need I say more?
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.
Is this an attempt to make Obama’s “purchase” of part of the Rezko property more legal?
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?
——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
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!
They’d have to pay me 6 figures to buy a lot in Englewood.
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