You know, alot of these decrepit neighborhoods full of blight border Montgomery and Delaware County communities locally. Read this editorial, and wonder like I do why municipalities are SO wasteful? Municipalties love to say they don't have enough housing, can't afford to put more affordable housing in. In Philadelphia, if they only gave a crap about these areas, they could solve some problems. of course, they cry a good game but always do nothing....and our communities which border some of these communities full of abandoned houses suffer. This is a FABULOUS Inquirer Editorial, by the way:

Philadelphia Inquirer: Posted on Mon, Aug. 25, 2008
Editorial: Blight-Fight Urgency
Coordinate an attack

The tide of blight in the city is rising again.

When then-Mayor Street announced his Neighborhood Transformation Initiative in 2001, the city had about 26,000 abandoned properties, the most per capita of any city in the nation. He set a five-year goal of demolishing 14,000 vacant, crumbling buildings.

The idea was laudable - get rid of dangerous eyesores and encourage developers to rehabilitate neighborhoods, raising property values. But NTI didn't exactly work out as planned. By the end of 2007, only 8,000 vacant properties had been torn down, at a cost of $181 million....The urgency of implementing a new, coordinated attack against blight can't be overstated. City officials now estimate there are between 20,000 and 25,000 vacant houses in the city again.

In other words, after having borrowed and spent hundreds of millions of dollars to fix the problem, the city has barely made a dent in its overall stock of dilapidated properties. That shows NTI wasn't very effective, and it also shows the relentless nature of the problem. The city must devote more resources, and smarter strategies, to stay ahead of blight.

Any residents who live near a vacant house know it's not just an eyesore. Vacant properties are unsafe, attract crime and reduce property values.