1 in 10 Indianapolis houses are vacant

The Indianapolis Star reports today that 1 in 10 houses in the county are vacant.

The numbers are far worse than the city is willing to acknowledge. You can't just count the 5,000 properties in arrears on property taxes because that approach only counts one segment of the problem. Many, many owners have continued to pay their property taxes, but have boarded up their properties anyway because they are too far gone to renovate, and even if renovated, won't attract tenants. Its a vicious circle. Until we have a mayor and ccc that actually care instead of just saying they care, we'll have a spiral downward; and keep in mind that a tsunami of foreclosures are coming next year. These properties cannot be renovated cost effectively. The only answer is to tear them down and try to preserve the quality of life and the property values of existing homeowners.

This is not a federal issue and its not a state issue. Its a local issue. And we shouldn't wait to receive more federal funding. We already got a $29 million dollar federal grant for this purpose which the Ballard administration has wasted. We are perfectly capable of tearing down vacant, boarded up houses within the county on our own initiative. Local neighbors would willing participate in controlled burns of these houses if it were permitted. Out of work contractors and subs would willingly demolish and remove properties to the dump for a fee. Its cheap and easy to demolish a house. Its just a failure of government. They know how to raise our taxes. But they can't keep our county tidy. Its your Indianapolis. For what we spent on the new library we could have torn down every boarded up house in the county. 12,000 houses at $6,000 per demolition equals $72 million dollars.

Lets brainstorm for a moment. What would happen if we tore down our worst properties? The demoralizing blight would be removed. The neighborhoods would stabilize. The real estate market would stabilize. And the real estate market is simply collapsing in center township. New assessments on these properties are coming in sky high; far higher than the properties are worth. And landlords pay double the rate of homeowners. So many landlords are in trouble now. They have to choose between paying prop taxes and renovating properties between tenancies. So they just stop renovating and board up. Even Pat Bauer is acknowledging that property tax caps are probably justified but useless without some control over ridiculously spiking assessments. But the real problem is the city's abject failure to tear down the derelicts. They're allowing the ghettoization of our fine city through failure to act. And its getting worse. Mr Ballard is simply not responsive. I voted for him. But I just don't see any leadership.

Anyone catch channel 6's story about all the dilapidated buildings that are city-owned? It...didn't really answer many questions as far as what will be done.

What it seemed to amount to is that the city would rather spend $100 here,$50 there to repeatedly patch up these empty buildings instead of spending a few thousand and getting rid of them once and for all, meanwhile the buildings are home to vermin - rodent, insect and human varieties.