Philly land bank will target vacant properties

Philadelphia is setting up a citywide land bank that could become a model for other big cities, The New York Times reports. The city has 40,000 vacant or abandoned properties, the result of foreclosures, tax delinquencies, deindustrialization, and the like. They are controlled by four city agencies in a Byzantine bureaucratic system that often discourages reuse, the Times reports. The new land bank will set up rules that encourages sale of properties to private developers and landlords that immediate clean up and reuse sites, rather than hold them as investments. “If Philadelphia moves forward with this, it will be a very good model for Detroit,” which has an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 vacant properties, said Frank Alexander, a professor of real estate law at Emory University. Baltimore recently announced new efforts to deal with abandoned properties, the Baltimore Sun reports. “Over the next 21/2 years, the city is budgeted to spend nearly $22 million to tear down 1,500 abandoned houses — a move urban planners say could transform Baltimore visually and clear a path for struggling neighborhoods to attract future development. Previously, the city had been spending about $2.5 million a year on demolition.”

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