What's happening to my old neighborhood..... by 6IXSTRINGJACK

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

What's happening to my old neighborhood.....

POSTED BY: 6IXSTRINGJACK
UPDATED: Thursday, May 23, 2013 05:27
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VIEWED: 694
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Wednesday, May 22, 2013 3:31 PM

Who grew up in a neighborhood where you could sleep soundly with your basement windows unlocked and open, bringing in that cool early-summer nighttime air?

Me too....

Fortunately, I seem to have moved into a place such as that now, but I had to move more than 25 miles away from Chicago and across state boarders to do it.

5 blocks from my Illinois house growing up is a corner on a building that has ALWAYS been a bar of sorts since I grew up there. Whether it was failure or simply moving on, the name had changed at least 8 times in my life. No matter what it was called when I was old enough, I always enjoyed my time there. I didn't even live close by then, but most of my old friends frequented the bar so I went.

That spot has been empty for 3 years now. Prime real-estate, deep in the heart of suburbia, and nobody is claiming it.

Not only are the taxes astronomically high for owning a business in Illinois, but after a recent inspection by the local government before it was rented out, it was found that the new owner (buying as-is) would have to install a sprinkler system to keep the building up to code.

(They'd not only have to pay for permits, but they'd have to pay full time union wages to Illinois Union employees at nearly 20 times the price I could do it myself)

NOPE.....

No business will EVER open there again unless some laws are changed. It's much more profitable for the owner of that real-estate to take a loss on their taxes than it is to upgrade the property.

(See Also: Decline of Detroit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_Detroit)

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Wednesday, May 22, 2013 3:45 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Just as an aside.... I thought this was pretty comical...

2,509 stores looted or burned, 388 families rendered homeless or displaced and 412 buildings burned or damaged enough to be demolished. Dollar losses from arson and looting ranged from $40 million to $80 million.[5]

All of that, and only 40-80 million?????

Sounds like TRILLIONS of dollars debt in today's money.......

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Thursday, May 23, 2013 5:27 AM

NEWOLDBROWNCOAT

Dude, it's happening here in Los Angeles/ Long Beach too. Plenty of stores burned during the Rodney King riots (remember those from Ancient History ?) are still vacant lots. And a lot of places have been boarded up because of the Big Recession of 2007 we haven't recovered from yet.

I judge it as something wrong with the economy when someone can afford to spend private, non-government, money on real-estate and then afford to let it just sit there vacant or empty.

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