December 11, 2011 3:02:21 PM PST
Vacant Properties: Growing Number Increases Communities' Costs and Challenges. GAO-12-34, November 4.
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-12-34
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d1234high.pdf
This GAO report highlights the cost of vacant property on the community. Depressed property values, Cost of maintenance. Lack of staff to enforce abatement. Assuming ownership of abated property.
Vacant properties in the United States have increased from nearly 7 million in 2000 to 10 million in April 2010. California has seen greater than a 50% increase in vacant properties.
Part of the increase in vacant properties can be traced to unrealistic population forecasting. During the housing boom, population pyramids were showing a decrease in the age group of people who buy houses, California planners were forecasting growths of seventeen percent per year. At the time one percent per year growth in property buyers would have bee pie in the sky unrealistically high.
As a concrete example, consider Yuba County, CA. There was a push and considerable public expenditure to develop property for housing. At the same time, Community Service Areas were abandoning their responsibility to proved government services. County and State governments assumed the costs of the failed CSAs.
Yuba County also failed to collect funds from the developer to pay for government services such as police, fire, medical, and schooling.
A possible remedy is to abandon the properties in failed CSAs and move the people to the empty houses in the development behind the bond funded levees. Cost to be recovered from the developer. The public may be better served by contributing to the cost of closing the failed CSAs and filling or bulldozing the vacant houses.
Look to Detroit and Flint, Michigan for examples of downsizing. The pain and the cost.
Land banks to be used as the sponge.
Dick Boyd
9953 Gary Drive
Browns VAlley, CA 95918
530 639 236-
dickboyd@aol.com
