From the WSJ.
So far, Washington has put its political capital into trying to refinance salvageable homes for unsalvageable homeowners (archived: 2011), when a relevant policy would consist of judiciously buying unsalvageable houses and demolishing them. Fannie and Freddie’s strength is housing market software: They could be put to work devising a least-cost, maximum-bang strategy for demolishing unoccupied homes to preserve as much value as possible for the homeowners and mortgage creditors who remain.
I cannot think of any areas/developments in the Charlottesville region that would be candidates for a demolition and reclamation strategy, but on one level, this makes sense. The government has exercised this strategy in so-called blighted (archived: 2008) areas before; why not now?
One would think that very few of the so-called “targeted areas” would have much historical significance, and likely very few are “affordable.” Think of the jobs that could be created.
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