Vacancies in Suburb and City Alike

Posted by on July 03, 2008

"This isn't just blight in the urban core; it's blight and abandonment in new suburban communities, and that's just never happened before."  That's the way Joe Schilling, a leader in the National Vacant Properties Campaign and an urban affairs professor at Virginia Tech's Metropolitan Institute, characterized the new twist on the ballooning vacant home problem in America.

The Christian Science Monitor reports that "in some Sun Belt cities like Orlando and Charlotte, officials have tripled or quadrupled the number of liens they've placed on vacant homes in the past year, hoping to recoup at some point the money cities are spending to try to keep the properties from going to ruin. In California and Arizona, neighborhoods of half-million-dollar homes stand nearly empty, with some lonely residents using their former neighbors' yards as driving ranges. Meanwhile, long foreclosure lag times and uncooperative note-holders mean swimming pools go green, rain gutters fall off, weeds grow high, and ne'er-do-wells move in."