Abandonment and vacancy issues in Buffalo, NY were shared with the nation again today in the following AP story that appeared in the New York Times - Cities Fight Glut of Vacant Houses.
photo - Doug Benz
photo - Doug Benz
Rust Belt cities, already beaten down by a miserable economy before foreclosures began spiraling nationally, are moving to cut the number of houses left vacant when the mortgage can't be paid. At stake are valuable tax dollars and the survival of neighborhoods...read the rest.
Details and stories from Cleveland and Baltimore are included along with Mayor Byron Brown's 5 x 5 demolition scheme. Buffalo's own Cindy Cooper is quoted in the article, too. She made the front cover of Business Week last month in a story about what happens when banks walk away from foreclosures - Dirty Deeds and Toxic Title.
fixBuffalo readers may remember a New York Times article from last September - Scourge of a Beaten Down Buffalo that showed Buffalo having more vacant houses - on a per capita basis - than any other city, except St. Louis. I first wrote about Cleveland's Housing Court in 2006 when local housing activist Michele Johnson visited Judge Pianka with über City Inspector, Tracy Krug and Judge Nowak - Housing Court in Cleveland.
fixBuffalo readers may remember a New York Times article from last September - Scourge of a Beaten Down Buffalo that showed Buffalo having more vacant houses - on a per capita basis - than any other city, except St. Louis. I first wrote about Cleveland's Housing Court in 2006 when local housing activist Michele Johnson visited Judge Pianka with über City Inspector, Tracy Krug and Judge Nowak - Housing Court in Cleveland.
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Artspace • BAVPA • Woodlawn Row Houses • my flickr
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1 comment:
That NYT article uses only a few paragraphs of a longer AP report about Buffalo a few days ago:
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080205/ny_abandoned_homes.html?.v=1
The AP reporter talked with Byron, Tobe, and injured fireman Mark Reed's mom.
Quote from Tobe in it:
"The rough rule of thumb is if we've had a house that's been unheated for two winters and it's 100 years old or so and wood frame, it's almost impossible to save economically," Tobe said. "And the vast bulk of Buffalo's structures are wood frame and most of them are around 100 years old now, so once they're unheated and the water gets in, the deterioration is very, very fast."
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