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Comment by zip1234 | Hacker News Reader

Many of the abandoned houses in Detroit are owned by speculators who will do nothing with it but wait for land prices to increase.

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And that’s worse than them just being abandoned how? Nobody else wanted them, nearly anybody could have bought dilapidated houses in poverty stricken neighborhoods extremely cheaply.

They are still abandoned. They are instead now owned by people that have the means, but no intention of making them better.

It has been shown that LVT reduces blight: https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/sta...

> It has been shown that LVT reduces blight

Did you mean to post a different source? The one you posted doesn't "show" anything, equivocates on whether LVT actually reduces blight in the few instances where it's been practiced, and makes meaningful suggestions for solutions other than LVT that it indicates have been shown IN PRACTICE to reduce blight (e.g. a land bank).

On the other hand, many of the vacants in Philadelphia are vacant because the owner has fled because the back taxes are more than the building is worth.

Many of the houses abandoned in Detroit were abandoned (and often torched) due to the ridiculously high property taxes and lack of value returned by the city for those taxes.

It's hard to justify telling land owners to pay high property taxes when the city delivered the highest crime rates and worst performing schools in the nation in exchange for those tax dollars.

Land value tax aligns incentives better. If property values go down because the place sucks, at least your tax bill drops in line with that.

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