At one point, in September of 08 during the great recession and housing market crash, there were 2031 registered vacant buildings in St. Paul. Most of those buildings were someone’s home. Many were eventually torn down leaving large gaps between the houses on many an inner city block. As of February 2017 there are 809 vacant registered buildings in St. Paul and that is still pretty high. I suppose a few more will disappear this year.
Many people lost their homes during the crash. I hate the word lost because it seems more like they were stolen. The banks got financial help from the government while homeowners ended up out on the streets. There were also a bunch of new consumer protection laws enacted that will likely be repealed soon because they hurt the financial industry by making it harder for them to take our money and throw us out on the street.
What is a registered vacant house? It is part of a City of St. Paul program. Be warned that the link to the city web site probably won’t work a year from now as they city has a very popular program where they move the pages on their web site around every year so that the links break.
