Tearing down houses to save our cities

last updated 8 January 2015

Jim Rokakis

The Washington Post

Sometimes demolition is what a neighborhood needs most, said Jim Rokakis. In cities across the country, vacant and vandalized properties are choking the life out of communities that are otherwise poised to recover. Many of these now-worthless houses are “functionally obsolete” since thieves have stripped them of anything of value, and local governments are overwhelmed by the cost of maintaining what’s left. Detroit recently spent $1.4 million over 18 months “just to board up houses.” The empty properties breed crime and depress the values of occupied houses around them. “The answer isn’t to scrape together money to try to fix these homes. The solution is to tear them down.” The lots they sit on could be transformed into community gardens, parking lots for new businesses, and neighborhood parks. In cities with a strong real estate market, it may make sense to preserve these homes. But in weak housing markets like Cleveland and Detroit, or in the high-vacancy areas of Chicago or Baltimore, the best way to rebuild neighborhoods is “to knock a few things down.”