Abandoned Homes A Problem In KC As City Bulldozes At Least Three A Week

In Kansas City, Missouri, The Kansas City Star reports:

• A front-loader loudly punches a huge hole through the old house. The structure shudders. In seconds it’s reduced to rubble, another victim of the nation’s vacant house epidemic. [...] “This is typical,” said Dalena Taylor, an officer with Kansas City’s dangerous buildings department. “It happens more than not — people abandoning a home when they can’t care for it anymore.” City officials estimate there are 6,000 abandoned homes, many of them in the urban core. But experts say the number is more likely twice that high.

***

• [W]hile the city demolishes at least three houses a week, Pare said, inspectors find hundreds more. If they have to be torn down, the cost and environmental cleanup can rise to $8,000 per structure — money the city tries to recover from the owners, if they can be found.

For more, see KC tackles problem of vacant homes (for story on one web page, try here). neighborhood destruction from foreclosures kappa