Great Planet Money episode on demolishing N. Bradford Street
I caught the latest Planet Money episode, which followed the local residents and city finding all of the absentee owners of a block on N. Bradford Street in the city. It took them years to track down all of the owners and purchase the abandoned buildings, but they finally got rid of them all.
Interesting to think that potentially REIs are doing some of this work in other neighborhoods by hunting down absentee owners.
https://www.npr.org/player/embed/491507799/4915589...
They mentioned in the episode that there are 7,500 vacant/abandoned buildings in the city.