They say one vacant lot represents an opportunity, hundreds are a worry, and tens of thousands make for a crisis. With a national housing shortage, it is shameful and a grand failure of local governments to address thousands of undeveloped vacant lots perpetuating all that is bad with our cities: crime, drugs, and homelessness. In Detroit, Pittsburg, and Chicago (three former industrial hubs), the populations have fallen by roughly two-thirds, more than half, and about a quarter, respectively, since their heyday in the 1950s. The mass exodus over the decades decimated the housing market and the decay has been further exacerbated by outdated government policies. That is starting to change finally and, if successful, other struggling cities across the country should take note.
A vacant lot may look promising to the untrained developer eager to erect a multi-family property on the land but, dig a bit, and it isn’t so simple. More often than not, there are back taxes, unpaid water bills, demolition liens and unpaid fees making it an obstacle course of insurmountable hurdles to obtain clean title. And clean title is what developers need in order to build and without it, they won’t touch the land.
Decades of legislative neglect has resulted in more than 90,000 vacant lots in Detroit, 13,000 or so city-owned vacant lots in Pittsburgh, and roughly 26,000 in Chicago, some of which are caught in a limbo of back taxes and unpaid fees. What can be done? A few things it turns out: Detroit officials want to triple property tax bills to disincentivize owners from allowing lots to remain undeveloped. In Chicago, the Cook County land bank controls hundreds of vacant lots and, through the land bank, the city can more efficiently clear title on these encumbered lots and transfer them to developers or nonprofits more or less shovel-ready. The city often excuses the land banks from paying any back taxes, making it easier to move the land in a sale. Still, before land banks can transfer the lots with clean title, landowners are entitled to due process (it’s America after all) and must be given the chance to pay the taxes owed, settle demolition liens, water bills, and other outstanding fees. In Chicago, the chair of the Cook County land bank, Bridget Grainer, said the process of clearing title through the land bank has “eliminate[d] a market-killing impediment, and the market worked as it should” in the development of several projects. But, due process isn’t swift as it took years in Chicago before the land was transferred and the lots developed. And such victories in Chicago are counted in the hundreds compared with a supply of vacant lots in the thousands. But Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will the resurrection of these beaten-down cities.
Website Source: Barrett, Joe. “Too Many Vacant Lots, Not Enough Housing: The U.S. Real-Estate Puzzle.” The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company, 20 Aug. 2023, www.wsj.com/real-estate/too-many-vacant-lots-not-enough-housing-the-u-s-real-estate-puzzle-2aa19733?mod=hp_lead_pos7.
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