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Focus on foreclosures (part 2)

Summit County targets the fallout from abandoned houses

 

The owners are gone; the properties are foreclosed; vacant, unattended houses dot the neighborhood. As the foreclosure crisis persists, the increase in the number of abandoned properties has become more than a nuisance in Summit County and across Ohio. The city of Akron alone is estimated to have as many as 7,000 vacant properties.

Thus, plans for an Abandoned and Vacant Property Task Force in Summit County are crucial. Neighbors face depreciation of their own properties near abandoned houses and overgrown yards. In addition, they live with the risk of vacant properties becoming magnets for vandalism and other crimes. For local governments, the cost of foreclosures is equally steep, from loss of property-tax revenues to the expense of securing and maintaining vacated properties. The price tag to Cleveland and several other Ohio cities in 2006 for a range of services, including mowing lawns and boarding up some 25,000 properties was estimated at about $63 million.

During the next six months, the task force will identify properties that are vacant, thus providing a clearer view of the extent and severity of the problem. The group also will recommend best practices to reduce the blight created by abandoned lots. Meanwhile, the county is pressing ahead with a program that will use a federal grant to buy, salvage and sell some abandoned properties, raze those that are too far gone and bank the land for future use.

The concerted effort should help ease the sense of helplessness in neighborhoods struggling to maintain a grip on the value of their homes.

 

Get the full article here.


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