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You are missing the role that race can play in all of this in the U.S. context. Read up on "white flight."
White flight is definitely a possibility, and most of my "non-rustbelt" examples of blight are cities in the south that likely experienced a lot of racial tension.
Canada has a stronger social safety net might explain the fewer abandoned parts of cities.
Unoccupied house could also include ones that the owners have moved out of but are for sale and either have not been purchased or new owners have not taken pocession of. There are abandoned houses in rural areas small t9wns and on farms. I don't know if they are counted and if they are for how many decades.
I n9t8ce a lot more abandoned vehicles in Montana than in Alberta. This could be due to used cars being worth less there so not worth selling or stricter town bylaws forcing owners to dispose of the abandoned cars faster. Maybe something like this applies to houses as well.
Canada has a stronger social safety net might explain the fewer abandoned parts of cities.
Unoccupied house could also include ones that the owners have moved out of but are for sale and either have not been purchased or new owners have not taken pocession of. There are abandoned houses in rural areas small t9wns and on farms. I don't know if they are counted and if they are for how many decades.
I n9t8ce a lot more abandoned vehicles in Montana than in Alberta. This could be due to used cars being worth less there so not worth selling or stricter town bylaws forcing owners to dispose of the abandoned cars faster. Maybe something like this applies to houses as well.
The lack of safety net might explain why low income people might be more likely to lose their home in the US, but it does not explain why the bank would just let the homes rot. To explain that, it's possible that due to "white flight", the homes in those neighborhoods lost so much value that they were not worth maintaining. "White flight" is a US-centered phenomenon, and to my knowledge did not happen in Canada.
I also explained above that the drawn-out foreclosure process can make it impossible for the bank to maintain the home for years, after which the house lost too much value to make it worth it to restore. This is also more of a US-centered phenomenon, due to there being a higher foreclosure rate than Canada, which may be related to what you are saying about the lack of a safety net, or may be because of much more lenient lending standards in the US compared to Canada, leading to more people buying homes who cannot afford it.
I would argue that the United States has a more generous housing policy. Foreclosing (repossessing) a home is a very complicated process in the United States. The United States has also encouraged home ownership for many decades, and the federal government backs approximately half of all mortgages. Foreclosure of a home stops all collection activities in most states. My understanding is that in Canada borrowers can be pursued for damages even after their property has been repossessed.
The US urban decay/empty homes problem is directly related to race. During the 1950s and 60s there was a huge 'white flight' to the suburbs to get away from the black population that flocked to northern cities during the 1920s in 'The Great Migration' of southern blacks to the north fleeing the violence and repression of the Jim Crow South. The reason it didn't happen as soon as the blacks arrived in the 20s was because there were still 'white only' areas in northern cities so they could still live apart from them and then the Depression of the 30s hit so people had no money to leave and then the 40s had the war. When the 50s prosperity hit along with most people having cars, the white flight took off.
This left the inner cities in the US with shrinking populations, a much poorer population, and a plunging tax base. Civic services in the traditional cities collapsed and so did housing values to the point where it was simply cheaper to leave and let the houses rot as opposed to having to pay ever increasing property tax bills. The whites also took their money with them and shopped in their local areas which resulted in the boom of the malls and the collapse of inner city shopping and entertainment with far fewer people shopping there and the people who still did were vastly lower income. Add to this that fact that whites had all the money and political power, state & regional governments ignored the needs of their decaying cities at a time when they needed it most. White suburbanites wanted freeways and good suburban schools and didn't want their tax dollars going towards transit for blacks and social services. This meant inner city freeways being built to get the suburbanites back and forth to work and they were always built thru poor and mostly black neighbourhoods disconnecting communities and furthering socio-economic stratification. This urban decay, poverty, poor civic services, lack of employment, coupled with racial biases led to drugs, violence, and hence further population decline. It was a vicious unending circle that is only now, 60 years after it started, beginning to reverse itself.
Canada never had this problem which is why we have no abandoned neighbourhoods or swaths of empty rotting homes.
Canada never had this problem which is why we have no abandoned neighbourhoods or swaths of empty rotting homes.
It should be noted that large scale urban blight has been a problem in the former industrial cities, primarily located in the U.S. Rust Belt around the Great Lakes. You are not going to find swathes of empty rotten homes on the coasts or Mountain West.
My city, Chicago, has large scale urban blight. Chicago has approximately 1 million fewer people than it did in 1950. However, urban blight is absent from the city's downtown core and northside neighborhoods—the areas that most Chicagoans and tourists interact with. Cities that can afford it—cities like Chicago—often condemn and demolish the dilapidated or abandoned homes, turning the properties into green space.
^^^ Your post proves my point, it's all about race.
The reason Denver, Phoenix, Seattle, SF, and Boston don't have these swaths of abandoned homes is because they were never destination cities during 'The Great Migration" of southern blacks to northern cities. The blacks went to Clevelnd, Baltimore, Philly, Detroit, St.Louis, and Chicago all of which suffer from population decline and decaying neighbourhood………… the blacks came and the whites left.
When the whites left they took their tax base, spending power, businesses, and political influence with them and the original city centers collapsed under the weight of plunging real estate values, faltering civic services, run down schools, unemployment, disconnected communities, and violence.
"However, urban blight is absent from the city's downtown core and northside neighborhoods—the areas that most Chicagoans and tourists interact with. "
I think there is still some urban blight in uptown (especially Kenmore/Winthrop corridor) as well as along Howard east of Clark and west on North Ave in Austin, and Jarvis near Ashland. Do they still have the homeless tent camps near the overpasses on Lake Shore Drive on the north side or have those been cleaned out? Uptown was the poster child for urban blight in the early 70s. I remember my Dad giving my driving tours on Sunday mornings of the skid row on W. Madison St.
Every city has it's nice and not-so-nice areas, we are talking in generalities here. Every city is different with it's own unique history, economy, culture, and demographics but generally the rule stands...……...search out the cities that were the recipients of the Great Migration and you will find the cities with the most urban decay and abandoned homes and businesses.
This is not to say Canadians weren't racist as we most certainly were but while the US showed it racism towards blacks, Canadians did it towards our Indigenous peoples in spades. The difference is that Native people have never been very urban in nature so up until the last 30 years, in the majority of Canadian cities, Natives were simply not people the average Canadian had any interaction or even experience with. There was no 'white flight' because in Canada's urban case, there was nothing to flee.
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