City officials are pondering over whether they should use $1.1 million in federal funding to buy foreclosed properties and either rehab them or raze them so developers can build again on the sites, according to the Daily Reporter.
Been there. Done that. Doesn’t work.
Maybe, maybe there are organizations out there that can do rehabs and not end up destroyed by them, but there are any number that tried and failed. And maybe, maybe we should all be reconciled to the disappointing fact that it may cost $150,000 to rehab a house that will be worth maybe $75,000 to $100,000 when it is all fixed up. Those kinds of numbers are just hard to swallow, though.
And as for redeveloping the sites — have the city’s great minds driven through the city lately? The city, to its credit, actually does tear down houses that need to be torn down. (A lot of other places just let the structures become hazardous crime magnets as they fall apart.) There certainly isn’t a rush to build anew on the vacant lots, though. The vacant lots stay that way, although the tall weeds I saw yesterday suggests that maybe the city has cut way, way back on maintaining the vacant lots it already owns.
Maybe what the city ought to do is resist the urge to bite from this particular poisoned apple. The $1.1 million isn’t enough to make a real impact on Milwaukee’s housing stock anyway. Maybe the city ought to use that money to take care of the vacant lots and foreclosed properties it already owns.
Tax the hell out of ‘em
Tuesday, August 10th, 2010Semi-hypocritical me, who ends up with plastic grocer bags every time I forget the reusable bags in the car (asking for paper bags means that plastic bags will end up tucked inside the paper ones), thinks taxes should be levied on the plastic bags to fund litter clean-up.
Sigh. Unfortunately, neither the state of Wisconsin nor the city of Milwaukee is paying me much mind.
Rajasthan, India’s largest state, though, has the right idea. From the Environmental News Network:
From the beginning of August 2010, the manufacture, storage, import, sale and transport of plastic carry bags will be illegal in Rajasthan. No shopkeeper, retailer, trader, hawker or vendor will be allowed to supply goods to consumers in bags.
The measure was proposed after local municipalities had complained of blocked sewer lines, drainage systems and water distribution pipelines due to plastics buried in the soil, providing breeding grounds for malaria and dengue fever. In Mumbai in 2005, India experienced massive monsoon flooding partially as a result of drains blocked by plastic bags, resulting in over 1,000 deaths.
Only a few percent of all plastic bags are recycled and the rest of the bags can theoretically persist for centuries in landfills, floating in the breeze or, as in India plugging water lines and creating disease sources.
Let’s just do it.
Posted in City of Milwaukee, Commentary, Environment, News | 2 Comments »