Turn them into low income housing and service centers for the poor.
But you know what does increase crime rates? Vacant buildings.
the unfortunate circumstances surrounding NYCHA properties was due to concentrating poverty, in singapore public housing is economically integrated so as to avoid the same problem
On a certain level this is common knowledge, reflected in the real estate markets of all big American cities. Dirt-cheap housing stock can be found in large swaths of Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, et cetera. It's cheap because even the most desperate families would rather live anywhere else, around anyone else.
The Free Market solves this perfectly - let people own their property and have a stake in where they live and maintaining the community and safety.
We just need to let people build and bring a real free market to property.
And if the free market solves this, why are we in this situation in the first place? Shouldn't the free market have solved this already? Instead we have piles of empty houses/buildings and more homeless than ever before.
Owning land doesn't give you the right to build anything. You need planning permission - which means permission from the local council, local homeowners and consultation, etc. which gives the NIMBY attitude so much power.
There aren't piles of empty houses. There aren't enough houses at all.
There is no 'situation'. Rational participants in the free market mostly have housing. The issue is that there is a widely available drug (fentanyl and meth too) that makes people behave irrationally, and thus the free market principles stop applying, since they presume a basic level of participant rationality. The fix from a government perspective is to remove the agency of those who are so drug addled that they cannot make good decisions.
And failing this: - displaced urban wildlife - tear it down and make space for plants
What?
The Austin Plaza Saltillo project is a great example. Shops at the bottom make it useful for the whole community. Parking is in garages underneath which promotes walk ability. When you see someone going to their place you don’t know if they are on food stamps or are a tech millionaire. There’s less stigma and more respect for all neighbors.
Or what could go right. Service and civic workers would finally have housing that wasn't 2 hours away from their city jobs.
There are more people for whom ex-commercial housing would work - than there are (or ever will be) units to house them.
Even in a tough neighborhood I'd of done it, if I had work nearby. I once parked the I was living in my employer's parking lot.
So it's not working well.