Green Daily

This is an issue that we have been dealing with in my city due not to the housing bubble but to faulty levees some three years back. Ironically, our housing market is strong but the appearance of uninhabited homes is a familiar one. Lots are overgrown and there is a great deal of crime in sparsely inhabited areas. If the rest of the country gets to the point where some communities turn into ghost towns, something will need to be done with the structures which will only decay or become homes for squatters over time. The most environmentally responsible thing to do would be to recycle all that can be recycled and turn the empty lot into green space.

Programs like The Green Institute or Planet Reuse will demolish a home and reuse what it can leaving you with an empty lot and a tax credit. This is great for older homes with a lot of salvegable lumber but what of newer homes built with poor quality materials that don't hold up to recycling?

There seems to be no plan in place for a lot of these homes as they are not quite big enough to be subdivided into apartments. It's possilbe that banks are just waiting it out, hoping the market will turn. But how long can an empty remain empty while it continues to drag the property values around it down?