City to Sue to Fund Demolitions
David Torke over at Fix Buffalo has the scoop. Evidently, the City of Buffalo is suing 36 lenders for the cost of demolishing homes that never make it all the way through the foreclosure process and end up vacant and derelict.
A copy of the City’s pleadings is here. Over 3,000 foreclosures took place within city limits in the last two years, as alleged in the Complaint. There are 10,000 vacant homes that need to be demolished at a cost of between $16,000 and $40,000 each.
This particular lawsuit, however, deals with 57 specific properties which the city alleges are nuisances it is dutybound to abate, and the Complaint is 90-something pages long, so each affected property is tied to each defendant lender.
Good for the city for holding someone responsible for the cost of demolition. But the raw statistics are sobering and put the lie to any talk of a renaissance.
Buffalo isn’t coming back until all of Buffalo is coming back.
And absolutely nothing has happened in the last 4 years to help Buffalo stop the bleeding.
Michele J Says:February 28th, 2008 at 9:11 am
I wrote briefly about this yesterday afternoon.The AFTF & COB worked collectively at this for about a year and 80% of the lenders are sub prime lenders.. Only a few banks with local branches were named in the complaint.Sub prime lenders are also never held accountable under the CRA something that needs to be looked at carefully IMO.
hank Says:February 28th, 2008 at 9:22 am
It’s about time that Government figured out it doesn’t have to pay for mistakes made in the private sector.