February 16, 2016
Given the high value of real estate in Toronto these days, it might seem ludicrous to abandon property. But, within the city and beyond its borders, it can be a common occurrence.
This phenomenon has been especially visible in Detroit. In fact, we’ve written in this space before about the city’s plague of abandoned property.
There, it was enough of a problem that the White House commissioned a special Detroit Blight Removal Task Force in 2013 to help the Motor City deal with its disused land.
Obama’s people partnered with local property tracker Loveland Technologies, and in the winter of 2013-14, they ran a survey of Detroit that found 50,000 properties—about 13 per cent of all Detroit’s properties— were abandoned. Another 10,000 were deemed likely unoccupied.
Loveland’s interactive, crowdsourced map of properties around the city shows the abandonment numbers have stayed fairly stagnant in the intervening years.
But now the Detroit Future City (DFC) Implementation Office is writing cheques to people with plans to fill some of Motown’s vacant lots.
Click here to read the full article in the Torontoist.
Peter Goffin, February 16, 2016, Torontoist