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You'll find most of us in rural areas don't care if criminals get themselves hurt. It's their own fault. We have very limited law enforcement presence to deal with the scum. Property owners have no liability for uninvited persons trespassing in my state.
Yup. Trespassers get any hurt they brought on themselves.
Different thing when a dilapidated property causes problems for people who are NOT trespassing, or harms the environment, or causes increased crime.
Fire in rural abandoned or dilapidated houses happens for various reasons. Sometimes it is squatters or meth cookers, sometimes an ember from an existing fire nearby that gets on the dump house and nobody is there to put it out, sometimes an on-again-off-again owner or renter is heating the house improperly or falls asleep drunk with a lit ciggie...
This is especially dangerous in drought-afflicted rural areas.
Fire in rural abandoned or dilapidated houses happens for various reasons. Sometimes it is squatters or meth cookers, sometimes an ember from an existing fire nearby that gets on the dump house and nobody is there to put it out, sometimes an on-again-off-again owner or renter is heating the house improperly or falls asleep drunk with a lit ciggie...
This is especially dangerous in drought-afflicted rural areas.
This is especially true this year what with all the homeless and half the country being in an extreme drought.
The scenes in 70's movies were mostly filmed in areas like the South Bronx. Not that trendy, even today.
Maybe not trendy, but some article online show it's much improved. Maybe it's not Brooklyn, but it's not Dresden, either.
Quote:
Originally Posted by WRM20
In Houston, there's a process for demolition that doesn't result in the City owning the property, there is a lien put on the property after demolition.
One big cause of the run down houses is people dying without a will for a generation or two, where the property ends up being owned by 20 people, none of whom feels responsible for paying taxes or maintaining "grandma's house". None of them wants to spend the money to get the ownership sorted out either, so the property just gets worse.
Several states beefed up their eminent domain laws after Kelo v. New London. I don't know about Texas, but in Indiana, it made it a lot harder for the government to take over houses even when they were clearly abandoned. It also made for quite a bit of risk for someone to fix up the house--the owner could come back after years and claim the house, along with any improvements to it. Some counties here now have a process to get abandoned houses into a land bank, where they can be sold or fixed up.
There's an abandoned house at the end of my road. The road ends where the State Forest begins; there's a trailhead there. So a pickup load of young men started going up there very late at night and messing around in the house. Squatters have left a lot of debris in there already.
It is a township road, gravel, 3 miles long, and has three inhabited houses, widely spaced, on it, the middle one being mine.
I'm asleep by 9:30 so I never even heard them, but another neighbor called the police once; he came up (we only have the one guy) and rousted them out of there. If they've been back, none of us have seen them.
It's true that I do not care if they get hurt in there, but the place is an attractive nuisance if ever there was one. The owner is local and just doesn't care.
There are quite a few places like that around here. I've come upon them while hiking even -- somebody lived out in the woods without public utilities for many years until they died or something, and the house eventually just folded in on itself. In a place with high property values, enterprising people buy up these cheap eyesores and turn them into houses again. Just not the case here.
I don't need to be convincing on this. If you have a non-rational bias, my attempt to shift it will go nowhere.
In real rural areas - this thread has somehow managed to include frikkin Detroit in that category - fire is often not an issue. Maybe in the PNW, but not where I live. A few ears of corn might pop, some privet or summac scorched, but usually the end is the building simply falling down. Until then, some are homes to Carolina wrens, bats, turkey vultures, groundhogs, and other critters.
Trespass is not only illegal in Alabama, a neighbor kid who was "exploring" a deserted home got arrested and diverted into a probation and program to get him back more on the straight and narrow. He had other issues and it was a good leverage. In rural areas where everybody knows everybody, different rules apply
People from Queens don't have to know how people in rural areas live to know what's best for them.
People from Queens don't have to know how people in rural areas live to know what's best for them.
I lived in Brooklyn briefly, as well as many other cities. You have a very valid point that some people have more need to try to control others, because of indoctrination, than functioning brain cells. Thankfully, most of those never figure out how to get away from others controlling them, or even out of the city, and are paper tigers.
If you live in Queens and immediately know upon sight the difference between a copperhead and a rat snake, and the relative dangers, I might take your thoughts seriously.
Years ago my wife and I inherited my wife's parent's older home on a couple of acres inside a small west Texas town. On this property also were two dilapidated buildings that had been used for storage.
Luckily the property was across the street from the city park where the high school held their annual homecoming bonfire. All it took was a local ad and I had several high school students with their dad's farm tractor/loaders ripping both buildings down and carrying the remnants over to their fire. The mayor's son even showed with his loader tractor. Voila! Suddenly we had a clean city property again that we were finally able to sell.
I think part of the issue is that laws that could be passed to help clean up these properties eventually get abused...
For instance, imminent domain, as I understand it, was to be used for clearing the way for highways and utilities.. and other projects that served the 'greater good'. Had an instance about 15-20 years ago where the city I lived in used it to force people off their land to make way for a shopping center.... said the tax revenue was for the greater good...
When ever I see a run down property, I would love to see it fixed or demolished as much as the next guy but I understand that what ever laws they pass to be able to legally condemn or remove someone's property.. ultimately gets abused....
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- fire is often not an issue. Maybe in the PNW, but not where I live. A few ears of corn might pop, some privet or summac scorched, but usually the end is the building simply falling down. Until then, some are homes to Carolina wrens, bats, turkey vultures, groundhogs, and other critters.
