TruthOut-
It’s a simple set of questions: “How many foreclosed properties are there in the country? What zip codes are they in? What factors sent people’s homes underwater?” For policy makers, journalists or anyone trying to size up or address the years-old housing crisis, these questions present the natural place to start. But their answers don’t quite exist.
In Chicago, for example, the city’s official vacant property count, which relies on the banks’ reporting, hovers just under 5,000. The Chicago Tribune estimates 18,000. Housing activists say there are well over 100,000.
Vacant homes in Chicago are so destructive to their neighborhoods and wider communities—dragging down property values, preventing the stabilization of markets and becoming havens for violent crime—that Mayor Emanuel recently announced that the city would spend $4 million finding and demolishing just 200 foreclosed properties.
Foreclosures are happening en masse all over the country, and Chicago is not unique in having absolutely no comprehensive list of in-progress or completed foreclosure properties, hampering any attempts to rehabilitate vacant homes or aid people being hit by the crisis.
[TRUTHOUT]
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