[HN Gopher] Can you just move into an abandoned house?
___________________________________________________________________
Can you just move into an abandoned house?
Author : RyanShook
Score : 69 points
Date : 2023-06-17 17:15 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.quora.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.quora.com)
| yosito wrote:
| I've only heard stories of successful squatting to take over a
| property coming from Europe and North America. I would be curious
| to hear how squatting is handled both legally and culturally in
| other parts of the world. What about South America, Africa and
| Asia? I imagine in some places if you're in someone else's
| property they'll just kill you. And in others, they may barely
| have a concept of private property at all.
| bevacqua wrote:
| happens abundantly in Argentina
| 867-5309 wrote:
| the squatting or the killing or the concept?
| yosito wrote:
| Argentina is very similar to Europe, culturally, so that
| doesn't surprise me.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| Specifically Germany?
| BbzzbB wrote:
| Obviously Spain, less obviously so Italy, and obviously
| not Germany despite Peron. There is a fair amount of
| German descendants, but their ancestors predate WW1, let
| alone WW2's high profile nazis that were let in (I'm
| assuming this is the basis of your comment, apologies if
| not).
| sethammons wrote:
| To the downvoters: why?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Argentines
| [deleted]
| yosito wrote:
| [flagged]
| duxup wrote:
| In Minnesota it takes 15 years and you have to pay the property
| taxes for 5 years.
|
| I want to say there were rules about keeping up the property
| (repairs) as well.
| mock-possum wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| cj wrote:
| Also known as Adverse Possession:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_possession
| downvotetruth wrote:
| Depends on the jurisdiction as in Louisiana (Civil Law) that's
| known as acquisitive prescription.
| SllX wrote:
| Louisiana is a bit of an odd-duck in the Law. Most laws in
| the United States are largely in the Anglo-American tradition
| (English, modified by American Constitutional values and
| subsequent jurisprudence). Its Civil law is more akin to
| Spanish/French law which is to say law in the Roman
| tradition.
| bombcar wrote:
| It varies from state to state in the US - some require that you
| possess it for 20+ years AND pay all associated taxes on the
| property.
|
| The second is hard to do if the owner is at all alive or
| available.
| ilyt wrote:
| Here in Poland it is 20 years if in "good faith" - the person
| living there _though_ they have rights for it (which is...
| weird in inself but I guess it can happen) but whole 30 if in
| "bad faith" (i.e. they knew but owner didn't do anything with
| the area).
| lelanthran wrote:
| > the person living there though they have rights for it
| (which is... weird in inself but I guess it can happen)
|
| I imagine it happens more often than you'd expect -
| consider complicated inheritance laws, and so forth.
|
| Parent dies without a will, verbally agreed with sibling
| that you'd take it, you thought you owned the property but
| after decades sibling dies and sibling's son inherits all
| of parents property including part-ownership, and so comes
| after you for half of the property.
| fbdab103 wrote:
| I assume a more common scenario is something like
| expanding the property line. Person A technically owns
| the plot, but neighbor B thought it was on their side of
| property, and has been letting their animals graze on it
| for the past decades. Until eventually a surveyor appears
| to correct the record and that is when the land-user can
| claim possession.
| bombcar wrote:
| Adverse possession _in general_ is to allow title
| problems to be cleaned up with "possession being 9 /10ths
| of the law".
|
| The cases where there is scandal are incredibly rare and
| it's usually just paperwork problems.
| ilyt wrote:
| Yeah or simply "parent had some property kids didn't knew
| they bought". Or it was some "a bunch of people owns some
| fraction of property and nobody cared enough to deal with
| it".
|
| One weird case I saw was some property where brother
| owned 5/6 and sister owned 1/6 of it.
|
| Turns out after father died mother,sister and brother
| each got 1/3, but mother put all of hers in will to be
| given to the brother
| ashirviskas wrote:
| >One weird case I saw was some property where brother
| owned 5/6 and sister owned 1/6 of it.
|
| >Turns out after father died mother,sister and brother
| each got 1/3, but mother put all of hers in will to be
| given to the brother
|
| Wouldn't that make it 2/3 for the brother and 1/3 for the
| sister?
| BryanA wrote:
| Adverse Possession
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_possession
| groestl wrote:
| Civil law systems have something similar
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usucaption
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| Where I live there are countless rustic properties, the vast
| majority of which will remain empty due to generations of
| infighting between relatives. Similarly, plots of land are carved
| up over the years until a single field may have 20+ owners. I
| know of one such case: they were offered a huge, insane amount of
| money for the land. But each one of the owners wanted more for
| their piece than the others, and tried to do private deals, and
| some refused to sell even though their piece was a mis-shapen
| series of lines on a government map that gained them zero
| benefits (farmers can't farm the land either), so nobody gets
| anything and the place is just rotting. Along with the houses
| surrounding. That have multiple owners.
| opportune wrote:
| Where is this? Southern Europe?
|
| It makes me very sad seeing so many stone buildings left
| uninhabited and overgrown with plants when I visit Spain and
| Italy. I always thought it was just the cost to upgrade them to
| modern living standards that was prohibitive, but from personal
| experience [0] with similar situations in the US, I can see
| partial ownership being an even bigger problem.
|
| [0] One set of my grandparents split their house equally among
| their 3 children. Because it has immense sentimental value to
| those children, they have not sold it and currently "rent" it
| at no cost to one of the children. Depending on the order in
| which those 3 children pass, the state of the house could
| easily become deadlocked for decades as I know one of my aunts
| would refuse to sell it even if the other aunt (who lives in
| it) passes. Thank god none of my cousins would want to live in
| it so we probably would eventually be able to sell it. It's not
| even close to a mansion or anything... just a regular 1960s
| middle class house in an area where land is pretty cheap. If I
| had a shitton of cousins and the property was very valuable
| land I could totally envision it getting permanently
| deadlocked.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| > I can see partial ownership being an even bigger problem.
|
| I don't know about the US, but where I live, I _think_ I
| think that if you don 't want to be, the other owners have to
| buy your slice. If they can't they need to sell the house.
| pacbard wrote:
| While inheritance laws in Southern Europe are weird, I don't
| think that partial ownership of buildings is the issue here.
|
| The real issue is that old buildings are not useful anymore:
|
| 1. Buildings that are not longer needed. For example, you can
| walk in woods and see old, run down, metati [1] in Italy.
| While chestnuts still keep a sentimental value, mountain
| people do not rely on them for sustenance anymore. Therefore,
| the drying sheds and mills have been abandoned. 2. Buildings
| that are not just functional anymore. Our barn had 20 stalls.
| It was functional as of the 1800s, but it's no longer a
| viable building to host a herd of milk producing cows. It has
| small stalls, lack of windows, difficult sanitation. People
| just build new barns and abandon the old ones. The problem is
| that the barn is build of rock, so it won't decay so easily.
| 3. Buildings that are no longer comfortable. Similar to point
| 2, old stone houses are not that comfortable. Having 3-foot
| wide stone walls for each internal room seems like charming
| until you realize that you can't use wall space. A house with
| a regular footprint (maybe 100 sq. feet) is much smaller once
| you consider all the space that stone walls take up. Plus,
| old houses don't have plumbing, electricity, etc, are damp
| and cold in the winter (but somewhat pleasant in the summer).
| People just prefer to live in a modern place rather than fix
| up an old one (which might be marked as historical and will
| need much more money to fix up).
|
| [1]: https://www.tuscany-exclusive.net/metato/
| rcme wrote:
| Many places allow minority owners to force the selling of land
| by petitioning the courts.
| [deleted]
| neilv wrote:
| On a tangent, I love this other post on the page, for the
| charming style and content of some earlier time:
|
| https://www.quora.com/Have-you-ever-visited-an-abandoned-hom...
|
| It's not Grandpa Simpson and the tying of an onion to your belt
| -- more like an information-dense tour, hitting many highlights,
| and what are they going to say next.
|
| I wonder whether (assuming it was typed by the author, rather
| than dictated), had they been inserting paragraph breaks, would
| that have changed their rhythm of associations.
| asimpletune wrote:
| In the USA, our legal system comes partly from the old Anglo-
| Saxon system, and partly from the French-Norman system, along
| with a few other parts of this. A lot of interesting and useful
| things come from this history.
|
| Specifically, regarding this case... The word fiefdom literally
| means "foot ground" in Anglo Saxon. That means your land (domain)
| is where you put your foot on the ground. Even if you claim
| ownership to some land, those claims can be in dispute if someone
| else's foot is on the ground, so to speak. To me it's always been
| so fascinating thinking about law, and the philosophy of law, in
| these very basic, raw terms. Like, from where does the law derive
| its power? To the anglo-saxons, the answer is from the ground,
| and that's why that aspect of the system is so obsessed with
| possession.
|
| Other cultures, like the Vikings, refined the ideas around tort
| law, like who should get paid how much if they're injured due to
| a fight.
|
| The Norman system brought about the idea of "writs". The idea
| that messages to and from the court (not a coincidence that it's
| the same word in English as what's used for royalty, whereas in a
| language like Italian it would something more like tribunal) need
| to use specific writs, almost like interfaces and API calls. This
| basically put an end to most instances of "self help". In other
| words, in most cases, you can not take the law into your own
| hands. You must abide by the system of writs.
|
| Even the word attorney comes from "at" and "tourney". Basically
| the guy you can pay who will go to the tournament, and fight
| instead of you before the court.
|
| Our whole legal system is informed by ancient concepts, and a lot
| of these ideas are not half bad. We would really do well to be
| reminded of that. If 3 years can go by without a bank even
| knowing about someone occupying a house they claim to own,
| someone living there in direct opposition to that claim, then
| from an Anglo-Saxon perspective they can't seriously claim to own
| it. To me that makes sense as well.
| [deleted]
| ajkjk wrote:
| Generally very interesting, but I looked up the bit about
| 'attorney' and Etymonline, at least, doesn't agree:
| https://www.etymonline.com/word/attorney. Thoughts?
| asimpletune wrote:
| You know honestly I can't be sure 100%, but that is what I
| was always taught in my "English as a language of law" class.
| I hesitate a little bc there's always the possibility that I
| misremembered.
|
| That said, my memory is that it came from before the French,
| during the trial by combat days, where the wealthy could
| appoint someone to go on their behalf.
|
| Another datapoint for this is that a legal title that still
| exists today is esquire. However a "squire" is also the
| assistant to the knight who fights in the tournament.
|
| It's totally possible that I'm mistaken about parts of this,
| especially the pre or post French use of the word, but I also
| think that a lot this knowledge is fairly esoteric and not
| captures well, even in today's age, outside of experts. Not
| to cast shade on etymology.com at all. Just that it is a
| possibility.
|
| I see a lot of Ancient Greek/Roman stuff that comes up that's
| either wrong or just naive, so. Idk.
|
| Glad that you think it's interesting though! I have a book
| club if anyone's interested https://r33d.org
|
| We just started reading history of the Peloponnesian war by
| Thucydides :)
| 6510 wrote:
| Long long ago a group of 20ish people (I vaguely knew) occupied
| an abandoned office. They agreed to spend 500 per person per
| month to improve the place as they all could easily afford it.
| Then came the struggle actually spending the money. No one wanted
| to spend time on it so every other month they just quickly agreed
| to one or two things at a time and spend as much on it as
| possible just to burn the money. After 6 years, 720 000 later the
| place looked completely insane.
| blowski wrote:
| In the early 00s, I lived for a few months in a squat in
| Clapham (South London), run by an author and Polish cyclist. It
| was a huge house by London standards - better than many shared
| houses - and having looked after it very well since moving in
| during the 90s, the neighbours were aware and happy with the
| situation. They were paranoid the owner, living in Australia
| since the 1950s, would find out just before the deadline and
| they'd lose it. But the rights did pass on, and they sold the
| house for about PS1.5M.
| behringer wrote:
| We need way more details on this.
| Xen9 wrote:
| Agree, want to know this story.
| CivBase wrote:
| Sounds like this would make for a fascinating read. I don't
| suppose any of them recorded their progress as they went and
| published it somewhere?
| samstave wrote:
| _" The gang fixes I-95"_
|
| Would be a cool reality series.
|
| EDIT: Charlie huffs all the paint, so they can only paint a
| portion of the I-95
| tedunangst wrote:
| Every once in a while the story goes around about the guy living
| in a mall. https://boingboing.net/2022/07/04/the-incredible-
| story-of-a-...
|
| He got probation. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/wbna21100501
| neilv wrote:
| Is there a way to read the Quora comments without SSO/login to
| Quora?
| crmd wrote:
| The legal system should encourage people moving into unoccupied
| houses. The hoarding of real estate is bad for society.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| True. Not only squatting is scary because it can make unlucky
| squatter who spent $$$ on improvements bankrupt, also people
| with tons of unused property are usually people who can afford
| security or whatever to stave off people who could actually
| live in it.
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| The legal system may not actively advertise it, but going by
| both the OP and other posts they pretty much do. Possession is
| 9/10 and all that
| UberFly wrote:
| You think this wouldn't cause a million different problems for
| individuals and the legal system? There are countless reasons
| why a house might be sitting empty for a period of time.
| ajross wrote:
| > There are countless reasons why a house might be sitting
| empty for a period of time.
|
| The point is that there are very few _good_ reasons. Public
| policy should have as its core goal that housing is used for
| homes.
| sethammons wrote:
| What if I leave for work for a year? Or 4? What is a "good"
| reason? If I own a house and left for a decade to binge
| drink, why should that mean I don't keep my paid for
| property? At what threshold do you tell someone: fuck you
| and your property, we are taking it because we want it. If
| siblings inherit, should only the ones who live there have
| any rights to it?
| ajross wrote:
| That's right, there are tradeoffs. So an absolute answer
| isn't the right solution here and we need to come up with
| policies that meet everyone's needs.
|
| To pick your first example: keeping your old home while
| you work abroad for a year seems not unreasonable. But
| demanding that you place it on the market as a rental (or
| sell it) if you're gone for 4-10 (!) seems likewise like
| a very reasonable regulation to me.
| crmd wrote:
| Rent it out to strangers, let friends live there for free
| if you want. Do anything other than letting a home sit
| vacant when there are tons of unhoused people sleeping in
| the street.
| sethammons wrote:
| I love extending arguments to logical absurdity to see
| where they fall apart. I have an airbrush my mom gave me
| when I was a teen. It has sentimental value. I've not
| used it in 20 years. Should I be forced to sell or rent
| it out? Or my MRE (Meals Ready To Eat) collection is over
| 10 years old now. Should I be forced to sell them to the
| hungry? How is that different than real estate?
|
| All resources are scarce including life saving medical
| tech. Do you force redistribution on all resources and
| assets?
| ajross wrote:
| With all respect: what you're employing is a good
| dictionary definition for a glibertarian argument. "The
| government shouldn't make a rule because at it's 'logical
| absurdity' the argument falls apart" is in more typical
| terminology a _absolutely ridiculous strawman_.
|
| You obviously don't seize obscure collectibles because
| there's limited public interest in such a collection. But
| that too has limits at the "logical absurdity" extreme:
| you _might_ seize a historical artifact or painting from
| a private collector because it was looted from a museum
| 90 years ago before re-entering the private market after
| a few decades.
|
| And, yeah, you might seize an abandoned property to
| prevent the community it's in from decaying.
| sethammons wrote:
| Abandoned. I think that is the delineation. Great point!
|
| I feel that if you can show something is abandoned, it
| can be up for grabs, including my personal property.
|
| Now to define "abandoned."
|
| In my home town, a potentially lucrative piece of real
| estate was fenced and not maintained because the owner
| was pissed at the city. The only reason they held it was
| because "fuck you city." I could see an argument as
| saying that it is abandoned and should be forced to be
| used. I can also see that as free speech because the
| owner was making a statement about local ordinances. Is
| it abandoned or an active political statement?
| brewdad wrote:
| I see an argument for the addition of the fence as
| "improving" the property and therefore showing that it
| has not been abandoned.
|
| Aside from the obvious goal of keeping out trespassers,
| I'd be willing to bet the fence was added based on legal
| advice. In a few years there will probably need to be
| some further "improvement". Perhaps as simple as
| replacing the fence.
| getmeinrn wrote:
| I'm not taking a side here, but not every law has to
| extend to the general case for it to fix a problem. If we
| required that, there would be almost no laws.
| mozman wrote:
| renters are a liability.
| ajross wrote:
| So are taxes and trees, but you have to pay them and hold
| insurance anyway. The point is that society as a whole
| has interest in the community in which that home exists,
| and it regulates the behavior of homeowners for the
| benefit of everyone.
|
| "Your home has to have people in it" is, 100%, a valid
| policy goal. And in extremis, paradigms like adverse
| possession exist to ensure this.
| sethammons wrote:
| I'm sorry, how do taxes or trees destroy the value of a
| property? Tenants absolutely can ruin a house. Imagine
| the surprise when you find out the tenants have done more
| damage to a property than their rent covers.
|
| Yes, people need and should be housed. No, that doesn't
| mean they need _my_ house. Build up public housing
| resources. If the govt wants to buy my property at market
| rate and give it away, and I agree to sell, go for it.
|
| Otherwise, I hear you have a good retirement fund that
| you spent years building. I didn't didn't do that, so
| just give me half of what you saved and we will call it
| fair.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| What are the reasons for your house to be empty for years
| unless you have another place to live, aka hoard property?
| bobs_salsa wrote:
| The only good reason I can think of at the moment are
| prison or medical reasons which leave you in a hospital for
| an extended period of time.
|
| In those cases those peoples rights of ownership to their
| homes should be upheld. Otherwise, I agree that we should
| go hard against property hoarding.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| Would be better addressed via taxes. There should be a surtax
| for property that is not actively utilized the majority of any
| year.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Utilization is hard to measure or proove. What if someone
| uses a house as his furniture storage?
| seizethecheese wrote:
| Not really. Utility usage would be a good proxy to catch
| cheats.
| crmd wrote:
| Furniture storage is for commercially zoned property, not
| for homes that someone could be living in.
| joe-collins wrote:
| We already have the concept of a primary residence. I'd
| strongly support laws that impose fast-ramping tax burdens
| on further ownership. Possibly with a more modesty burden
| for a second home--say, a family purchasing one to pass to
| children, or preparing for retirement--but I don't feel
| that there's any acceptable reason for owning several
| homes.
| davidrupp wrote:
| Why do you not think there's any acceptable reason for
| owning several homes?
| henry2023 wrote:
| Because your "right" of owning several homes goes against
| the human right of adequate housing. Jurisprudence tells
| you the order of rights and human rights come first.
| Ferret7446 wrote:
| Why should someone have a right to a house built by
| someone else? Just because someone else doesn't have a
| house doesn't mean they get to take a house that you
| built even if you already have a house.
| sethd wrote:
| It's funny that you use quotes around "right" when
| referring to property rights, which are well established
| as natural rights. All while making the claim that
| adequate housing is some kind of fundamental human right.
| It might be a government benefit in some places, but it's
| hardly a human right.
|
| If housing is a right, then it would make more sense to
| list the things that are not human rights. What else,
| Diet Coke delivered daily? Maybe a new car?
| michaelt wrote:
| Perhaps joe-collins supports a steep tax _discount_ on a
| _first_ home - much like a society might apply a lower
| tax rate on books and apples than on Lamborghinis.
| davidrupp wrote:
| Perhaps followed by progressively higher tax rates on
| subsequent books and apples?
| henry2023 wrote:
| If Apples were: 1. Essential to live 2. Considered a
| human right 3. Not accessible to >90% of the next
| generation 4. Being hoarded
|
| Yeah, fast progressively higher tax rates based on the
| number of apples you own would be perfectly reasonable.
| davidrupp wrote:
| Okay. [citation needed] on all of the above.
| davidrupp wrote:
| Who is the number one "hoarder" of houses in the U.S.?
| When I bought my house, all I had to deal with (as far as
| I know) was the bank and the prior owner, who seemed
| happy to sell.
| [deleted]
| Animats wrote:
| Varies enormously with the jurisdiction.
|
| There are places in the US so desperate for new residents they
| will offer you an abandoned house if you fix it up and pay
| property taxes. Buffalo, NY and Detroit have done this.
| samstave wrote:
| Years ago, when detroit was in desparate throws, I thought that
| it was ripe for a new 'silicon valley' and they should have
| pushed a huge start-up market. They didnt, but they should
| have.
|
| I still think detroit is a solid market - but you have to get
| some serious incentives...
|
| Look at fn twitter - they got SF to give them millions in tax
| breaks, only to find that all the other services (and tremote
| work) were untennable on market street (the Emporium now the
| westfield mall) has turned back into the failed district it was
| in the 90s (hint; public transport and parking greed fucked
| that up)
|
| Now look - the city of SF depends on Salesforce and twitter to
| bring thousands of people into the city - but it has no
| affordable place to house or park them.
|
| I think twitter owes the city a giant amount of money - and
| benioff can go fuck himself (speaking as someone who built out
| many of his offices)
|
| The point being that places such as Detroit need to up there
| game and build a tech scene - but I am afraid its too late.
|
| -
|
| EDIT: @DANG - im tired of this fn "posting too fast" -- it
| stiffles intereaction.
|
| I dont participate in Reddit any longer, but seriously - ive
| talked to you about this many times....
|
| I want to _engage_ with HNers, and your speed-brake thwarts
| that... knock it off. :-)
| reaperman wrote:
| > Years ago, when detroit was in desparate throws, I thought
| that it was ripe for a new 'silicon valley' and they should
| have pushed a huge start-up market. They didnt, but they
| should have.
|
| The #1 land-owner in downtown Detroit[0] (founder of Rock
| Financial and owner of Rocket Mortgage, Quicken Loans, and
| Cleveland Cavaliers) thought the same thing at the time and
| worked hard to make it happen[1, 1b]. It never "blew up" but
| the efforts did bring in some substantial amount of
| revitalization and additional business which perseveres
| through today. He also spearheaded attempts to win Amazon's
| bid for "HQ2" to bring amazon's new major headquarters to
| Detroit.[2]
|
| Dan Gilbert went to public high school outside of Detroit,
| and studied at relatively low-cost state schools (Michigan
| State University, Wayne State University). His son recently
| passed at 26 from neurofibromatosis, a genetic disorder that
| causes tumors, that can affect the brain, spinal cord and
| various nerve signals.[3] His dad ran a small lounge /
| restaurant in Detroit which looked like this[4], and his mom
| was a realtor[5]. His grandfather, Manuel Feldstein, owned
| car washes in Detroit[5].
|
| And no, I'm not part of a PR effort for the family, I just
| like looking into where various modern-day rich people came
| from. Detroit had a huge role in prohibition smuggling from
| Canada with plenty of people rising up the economic strata a
| la "Great Gatsby". It's claimed that 75% of the alcohol
| smuggled into the USA during prohibition came into Detroit.
| The backdrop for the culture of "Detroit muscle cars" were
| speed-running alcohol cargoes across the frozen Detroit river
| from Canada to USA. Smugglers even built a "beer pipeline"
| running from a brewery in Canada to the basement of an
| establishment in Detroit. The mafia were heavily involved in
| these profits. While it's possible that the car wash and
| restaurants were money-laundering fronts for such endeavors,
| the family's choice of neighborhoods and schooling are
| consistent with that of their public persona. Yes, they
| received plenty of benefit from being white during a time of
| great segregation, and benefitted from connections across the
| Jewish community which led to his founding of Rock Financial
| with Ron Berman. But it doesn't appear that he was born with
| any particularly different advantages than my father's
| Catholic family or many other (white) families in that area.
| My grandfather went from penniless after serving in WW2 to
| standard middle class as middle management at Ford Motor
| Company and my father came home from school one to a
| smoldering pile of ashes on the front lawn from a cross that
| was burnt in opposition to my grandparents vocal support for
| allowing black people to buy houses in Plymouth, MI around
| the time of the Detroit race riots.
|
| 0: https://www.michiganradio.org/economy/2013-06-20/gilbert-
| own...
|
| 1: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/business/dan-gilberts-
| que...
|
| 1b: Alternate: https://archive.ph/abzX7
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| 2: https://www.crainscleveland.com/article/20170914/news/1355
| 16...
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| 3: https://www.cleveland.com/cavs/2023/05/cavs-owner-dan-
| gilber...
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| 4: https://www.ebay.com/itm/295323506705
|
| 5: https://digital.bentley.umich.edu/djnews/djn.2010.08.19.00
| 1/...
| ghaff wrote:
| Per the opening of the NYT article, the emptyness at night
| certainly contributed to feeling unsafe. It's not that
| there were gangs of shady looking characters out and about
| for the most part. It's that there were wide, empty streets
| with no apparent activity.
| reaperman wrote:
| Yes. That is accurate. I lived in Ann Arbor during 2008
| but partied in Detroit from time to time. We'd say that
| "Detroit is very dangerous...if you run into someone. But
| you won't, so in reality it's actually safer than
| anywhere else." It's truly impossible to overstate how
| empty Detroit was at the time. You could walk around
| aimlessly for 30-45 minutes in many areas and not see a
| single soul. That said, you really didn't want to run
| across strangers -- the reputation for violent crime was
| well-deserved.
|
| A friend of mine rented a room for $250/month in an
| enormous mansion with 25-foot wide marble staircases and
| a panic room/vault in the basement. I have no idea how
| many rooms the mansion had, it was far too big to fully
| explore in the time I had. Since no one else was renting
| a room there, my friend used the mansion to throw raves
| with 50-100 people and we mostly stuck to 2-3 rooms, with
| the majority of the house still being empty.
|
| Some of my friends from slightly wealthier families
| bought up entire neighborhoods in Detroit at $10,000/home
| and renovated them, they revitalized the neighborhoods by
| installing a fun neighborhood dive bar with cheap menus
| and some convenient commercial stores. Many of those
| neighborhoods are still "hot spots" today, retaining
| quirky/fun culture. Makerspaces bloomed as well[0] due to
| a truly insane amount of heavy industrial equipment which
| was being sold for fractions of a penny on the dollar.
| The aforementioned rave scene also laid a lot of the
| musical foundations for today's EDM music, though it was
| not as impactful as the Baby Boomer generation's "Motown
| Records" (The Supremes, Jackson 5, Stevie Wonder, Marvin
| Gaye, the Marvelettes, and the Miracles). Before the
| Detroit Race Riots, people were regularly moving from
| Chicago to Detroit because Detroit was far and away the
| "cooler" city to live in of the two.
|
| 0: https://www.i3detroit.org
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Renaissance Center was started in 1970. That's how long the
| idea of "Detroit renaissance" has been current. At some
| point, you have to realize it's never going to happen.
| prepend wrote:
| The problem is that Detroit sucks and it's really cold. I
| don't think startups would want to locate there.
|
| Also, they are poorly managed and that's part of their
| decline. They aren't trying any good ideas like encouraging
| startup incubators and whatnot.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| Also no useful public transit. The People Mover is a joke
| and the busses are famous for being hours late / just not
| showing up. The infra used to be decent when the auto mfgs
| were around there and out in Southfield where some bigger
| office buildings were, but they haven't kept up with the
| times in terms of connectivity (why would they with no one
| to use it?). Housing is cheap but who would want to live
| there? Not much to do, not many cool smart people to hang
| out with, winters are awful, food scene mostly sucks, music
| scene is decent if you love really underground stuff and
| noise / screamo / UG electronic (esp house), schools are
| awful, nature has tons of mosquitos from all the lakes,
| lots of lakes if you're into boating (and lake cabins are
| like $50k), skiing sucks (no mountains), airport sucks and
| is far away + Delta took over so if you want non-stop to
| anywhere expect to pay at least $400, Chicago is a long
| drive but doable for weekends (again no train which could
| be an hour on high speed rail, it's less than 300 miles but
| flying takes as long as driving due to airports and
| transport on both ends)...
|
| Yeah, Detroit...nah. Source: grew up there. Never going
| back.
| yareally wrote:
| > "and lake cabins are like $50k"
|
| As a resident of the state below, I've been looking at
| cabins. Any recommendations?
| myself248 wrote:
| And the intellectual property laws are bullshit. Your
| employer owns all your ideas even if they pop into your
| head off-hours. It's hard to make a spinoff when some
| megacorp has that kind of teeth into you.
|
| California has all the startups, not because Californians
| are smarter or harder-working, but because they are more
| free.
| titanomachy wrote:
| > im tired of this fn "posting too fast" -- it stiffles
| intereaction
|
| My guess is that people are downvoting you (maybe because of
| profanity? not sure) which results in a shadowban/ratelimit
| of your account. Your comment shows up as gray to me, which I
| think means it's been downvoted or flagged.
| ghaff wrote:
| I was at a fairly sizable tech event in Detroit last fall.
| The convention center and area down by the river were nice
| enough but people didn't feel very safe in general and there
| were apparently some incidents--and we're not even talking
| particularly bad parts of town. A tech company would probably
| have a lot more luck with something like an Ann Arbor
| location. I think Detroit proper would be a really tough sell
| to get most people to move there.
| aaron695 wrote:
| [dead]
| scotty79 wrote:
| It's a hard problem. I think the best way to deal with abandoned
| houses would be for the municipality to forcibly auction them
| (once they are left empty for some time) and keep the funds
| acquired by the sale (minus the costs) invested into bonds or
| something and ready to reimburse owner if he shows up.
| code_duck wrote:
| That does happen when property taxes are delinquent - typically
| the county seizes the property and sells it to pay back taxes.
| more_corn wrote:
| The key is "open and notorious". You possess and improve the
| property openly for a long time and if the owner is asleep at the
| wheel the court just sort of cedes the place to you. I think the
| time limit I. Many states is 7-10 years so the owner needs to be
| really out of it. And if it goes wrong you lose the money spent
| on improvements, and could face charges. A better way might be to
| watch the auctions of property seized by the city for unpaid
| taxes. Pay a little bit, improve and don't live in fear.
| jgerrish wrote:
| Being trapped in an ambiguous situation where "improve" can
| mean many things can lead to unhealthy stress.
|
| If I have a real job and a real house, I have easier access to
| laws and what my responsibilities are.
|
| If I am in a situation like an "abandoned house", I'm
| vulnerable to vague jurisdictional issues around "improvement".
| Maybe San Francisco / Bay Area considers fire safety enough,
| but Chicago wants sidewalk snow clearing. Those are the simple
| things. Some jurisdictions will want "self-improvement"
| classes. Keep practicing that space flute... And then Utah
| wants other things.
|
| Yes, HOAs are similar, I get that.
|
| Anyways, I've got to keep a fucking yellow legal pad with all
| these issues. And I know I'm not an expert.
|
| Then I'm not just vulnerable to the whims of the city, I'm
| vulnerable to exploiters telling me there are these additional
| requirements.
|
| I dread these next patronizing Last of Us style real world
| shows. When I should look at them joyfully.
|
| And yeah, people are housed now, I can't argue with that. But
| we are replacing a public social contract with something
| darker.
|
| I guess we get a new series of sitcoms about "HOA" style
| neighborly miscommunication. Hahaha. Oh Mr. Bundy, you can't
| have a toilet on your front lawn! Oh Mr. ALF, you can't eat
| cats! Oh Mr. Cohen, you can't say that on television! Hahaha,
| what a cultural misunderstanding.
| 0x53 wrote:
| So in many jurisdictions the city doesn't actually take the
| properties. Instead they auction off a lien to a private
| company/individual and then that individual can foreclose if
| the tax isn't paid. So this strategy might not work.
| hollerith wrote:
| So you buy from the private company after they foreclose.
| brewdad wrote:
| At that point the title is clean, so I would expect the
| property to sell much closer to the market rate minus any
| repairs needed to make it livable. Not really a deal to be
| had.
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