The big number in Philadelphia this week is 40,000. No, it’s not the number of yards Michael Vick threw or ran for on Monday night, but rather, the number of vacant and blighted land parcels throughout the city.
According to a report by Econsult Corp., of the 40,000 lvacant and blighted lots, approximately 9,000 are publicly owned or controlled by various city agencies like the Redevelopment Authority and the Philadelphia Housing Authority. The rest of the lots (31,000) are privately owned and become the city’s problem only when landlords are deemed absentee and parcels are sold through sheriff’s sale or acquired by way of eminent domain.
Because no single entity or organization is responsible for the vacant parcels from acquisition to development to re-sale, the lots sit vacant for years lost in a mess of red tape impossible for an interested party to maneuver through. And the mess is costing the city and its residents a great deal.
Econsult Director Lee Huang estimates that “maintaining” these vacant lots—police fire, L&I visits—costs the city $20 million per year (page 9 of the report). Compounding this cost is the loss of tax revenue from the 17,000 parcels currently behind on their taxes (page 11 of the report). For residents losses come not just in the intangibles like decreased safety and loss of community, but in decreased property values: just one blighted parcel on a block can lower property values by 20% or $8,000 (page 7 of the report).
The report sheds light on the need for the city to create a master list of the properties and assign one governing body to acquire and re-sell vacant land. If the city is able to reform its process, some 3,400 vacant land parcels could be transitioned into housing over the next five years. Such development would create hundreds of jobs and potentially add $44 million to the property-tax base ($3.6 million of which goes to the the city and school district). It would improve upon those intangible things like community and safety exponentially (more on this on page 14 with examples pages 30-32).
