When nobody is left except those in public housing, how do the bills get paid? Nobody wants the real estate.
It is what I noticed when I was eating lunch in the compuware lunch room a few floors up about 7 years ago. I looked down on the street below where there were about 8 storefronts. Most were closed or going out of business. There was no foot traffic except street people. Each one would check the contents of the trash cans as they went by.
There’s nothing in the trash cans of value if everyone there is LOOKING for things in the trash can, rather than putting things in it. It’s becoming the norm for the whole city.
I know somebody in Newark who was complaining to the city about drug traffic in vacant houses nearby; they expected the city to pursue the property owners, but in the end it turned out the city had seized the properties years before due to tax liens. They didn’t have the money to demolish them, they had no buyers who wanted them, so they were just abandoned crackhouses left to rot...
Newark’s population has never reached the levels it had been prior to the race riots of the 1960s; if it ever does top that it will be a Hispanic city (like many other US cities).