Get ready to say goodbye to a bunch of abandoned buildings.
“Demolition Day,” which Mayor Annise Parker announced in her state of the city speech last month, is the culmination of months of effort by the Houston Police Department’s Neighborhood Protection Corps to find owners and encourage them to take care of their properties.
“This is a time where we can show our constituents that we really care about blight removal in our communities,” said Councilwoman Wanda Adams, who chairs the City Council’s Neighborhood Protection Committee. “We are concerned about quality of life and public safety, and dangerous buildings do bring the quality of life and the property values in our communities. This is a positive step, but we have a long way to go.”
Since 2005, the city has taken down 3,909 buildings that were ordered demolished after efforts to contact the owners and urge them to make repairs were unsuccessful.
185 buildings are on the list for today; Swamplot lists a few of them. According to the sidebar, 681 such demos have been done in this fiscal year, and adding in this group makes it the busiest since the city started doing them. And there’s still a lot more of them out there.