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Who owns an abandoned house? · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know from House Stuff
0:04
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. My
0:12
Speaker 1: name is Josh Clark and across from me is Charles
0:16
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant. And because of that, because it's the two
0:19
Speaker 1: of us, uh and Jerry, of course, um, you have
0:23
Speaker 1: stuff you should know? Okay, yeah, stop protesting us. It's
0:27
Speaker 1: a sweet little drifecta of people in here. Do my
0:32
Speaker 1: favorite people in this office? Two of my two favorite
0:36
Speaker 1: people are in this office, me and Jerry. You're doing
0:44
Speaker 1: all right? Yeah? Man, I know for a fact that
0:46
Speaker 1: you're not, Uh, because I have an abandoned house across
0:50
Speaker 1: from me. Do you really? Yeah, We're gonna work in
0:52
Speaker 1: some personal details here. Well that's good man, because um,
0:55
Speaker 1: I feel like if there's anything personal in this world,
0:59
Speaker 1: it's an empty, unused house. Okay, you know, especially one
1:04
Speaker 1: that's left in your neighborhood. Isn't that a big like
1:07
Speaker 1: f you to the rest of the people who live there? Yeah?
1:10
Speaker 1: I've actually got two side by side. Now. Oh that's delightful. Yeah,
1:15
Speaker 1: that's great man, because as you already understand, and now
1:19
Speaker 1: I understand from researching this, and our listeners will soon understand,
1:23
Speaker 1: that's a real problem. Yeah, just one is a real problem.
1:27
Speaker 1: Two side by side. You may want to run a bulldozer. Well,
1:31
Speaker 1: there may be a happy ending. Okay, we'll play it
1:33
Speaker 1: out dramatically over the course of the show. That's good man. Um,
1:37
Speaker 1: so we should probably set the set the stage for everybody.
1:42
Speaker 1: It's the early to mid two thousand's sweet. Yeah, the
1:47
Speaker 1: first decade, early to mid part of the first decade.
1:50
Speaker 1: I'm in Los Angeles. Yeah, okay, um, and the real
1:54
Speaker 1: estate boom is in full swing. Everybody's forgotten about the
1:58
Speaker 1: dot com bubble? What was that? That was a fluke?
2:02
Speaker 1: You know, Let's start investing in real estate. Will make
2:05
Speaker 1: it like nineteen twenties Florida. And these prices, sure do
2:08
Speaker 1: you seem exorbitant, but hey, I'm sure we'll make our
2:11
Speaker 1: money back. And this bubble just keeps growing and growing
2:13
Speaker 1: and growing, and people are buying like four or five
2:17
Speaker 1: six houses, and I mean like people, not not companies,
2:20
Speaker 1: like people who are just flipping it. Then all Ice
2:22
Speaker 1: gets a show about flipping um real estate, like, there's
2:26
Speaker 1: flipped this actually, well yeah, okay, it's still it came
2:30
Speaker 1: out of this and this bubble is just growing and
2:33
Speaker 1: growing and growing. Then all of a sudden, it just pops,
2:36
Speaker 1: and it popped because everybody figured out that the prices
2:41
Speaker 1: for the houses were more than they were worth. Bubble
2:45
Speaker 1: head grown. It was artificial, there was an artificial market,
2:48
Speaker 1: and everybody just kind of walked away. It was a
2:51
Speaker 1: truly fascinating it was. It was fascinating and scary, but
2:56
Speaker 1: also it was like just to watch it. I mean,
2:58
Speaker 1: we watched it, we chronicled, but argually so the bubble bursts.
3:03
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of people, those speculators, investors and
3:07
Speaker 1: ordinary people who took out terrible, terrible loans and over
3:11
Speaker 1: extending themselves, um oftentimes with the hands of predators. There's
3:16
Speaker 1: a lot of people to blame. But there were a
3:18
Speaker 1: lot of houses that suddenly we're not worth what they
3:22
Speaker 1: had been paid for ye or house flippers that you know,
3:27
Speaker 1: maybe said my job, I kind of hate. I can
3:30
Speaker 1: flip a house. People are getting rich doing this, right
3:33
Speaker 1: And not only that, I can, actually the access to
3:36
Speaker 1: credit is so easy right now, I can afford six
3:39
Speaker 1: of them and take this kind of blighted area and
3:43
Speaker 1: fix these six houses up and just create a whole
3:46
Speaker 1: new neighborhood out of it, and some of those people
3:48
Speaker 1: were left not with a single family that just got
3:51
Speaker 1: burned or burn themselves on one house, but like, I've
3:55
Speaker 1: got six or seven houses now that I'm underwater on
3:58
Speaker 1: and I'm going to foreclose on all of them or
4:00
Speaker 1: maybe just leave. And that was enoughtion that a lot
4:04
Speaker 1: of people took. Here's the thing, a lot of those
4:06
Speaker 1: people did this under the guise of LLC's and so
4:11
Speaker 1: they didn't have to file for bankruptcy there. Their LLC
4:14
Speaker 1: just had to go away. Their liability was limited, exactly,
4:17
Speaker 1: it was very limited. Um. So there's a lot of
4:20
Speaker 1: people out there who just walked away from their houses.
4:23
Speaker 1: And those houses now this is two two nine, um.
4:27
Speaker 1: Those houses now are just sitting there abandoned in cities
4:30
Speaker 1: all over the country. Of course, Detroit has it worse,
4:33
Speaker 1: but there's a lot of other cities that have it
4:36
Speaker 1: pretty bad too. Um. And actually Detroit is kind of
4:39
Speaker 1: leading the way and figuring out what to do with
4:41
Speaker 1: these houses because right now they're sitting there. Even as
4:45
Speaker 1: the market recovers. The houses that are left over, that
4:48
Speaker 1: are abandoned are in really bad shape. So they're the
4:52
Speaker 1: ones that aren't going anywhere ever. And now we all
4:55
Speaker 1: have to figure out as a society what to do
4:57
Speaker 1: with these things. So who longs an abandoned house? Well,
5:02
Speaker 1: we'll get to that, Okay, I want some stats, all right,
5:04
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve, that's last year, two point three million
5:08
Speaker 1: homes were foreclosed on nationwide. Compare that to two thousand,
5:12
Speaker 1: four hundred and seventy thousand homes were foreclosed on. So
5:15
Speaker 1: it's quite a jump. Um, it looks like things peaked
5:19
Speaker 1: in two thousand eleven at about three point nine million
5:23
Speaker 1: homes in that year. Uh. And now we're kind of
5:26
Speaker 1: back down to like mid two thousand seven levels. Um.
5:30
Speaker 1: And then I just pulled this today Florida and they
5:34
Speaker 1: do this like monthly quarterly. Florida is in pretty bad
5:36
Speaker 1: shape right now. Like forget Detroit. Uh, they lead the
5:40
Speaker 1: country with UM one out of every one hundred and
5:43
Speaker 1: four housing units is in foreclosure in Florida. UM. Nevada
5:48
Speaker 1: is next at one in every one, fifteen, Illinois one
5:52
Speaker 1: and everyone seven, Ohio one and everyone eighty eight. And
5:55
Speaker 1: then Georgia one in every two hundred housing units is
5:58
Speaker 1: being foreclosed on. Yeah, and uh, Florida has I think
6:04
Speaker 1: four of the top five metropolitan areas in the country
6:07
Speaker 1: as well for just four closed homes. Yeah, Miami's number one, Orlando, Okalla, Jacksonville,
6:14
Speaker 1: and then Las Vegas is number four. So what is
6:17
Speaker 1: a bad shape? Although we are going to be talking
6:19
Speaker 1: about Detroit because this article talked about Detroit. Well, there's
6:23
Speaker 1: a big difference between and this is why Detroit comes up.
6:26
Speaker 1: Detroit probably has more empty houses, especially per capita, than
6:31
Speaker 1: any other city in in the country. And I think
6:34
Speaker 1: eighty thousand businesses factories are homes right now. So what
6:38
Speaker 1: I saw most recently was um, something liked and seventy
6:43
Speaker 1: two abandoned homes. Well, it probably depends on where engaged
6:47
Speaker 1: stats um. And that's out of something like three hundred
6:52
Speaker 1: and seventy thousand in total. Yeah, so something about like
6:57
Speaker 1: thirty six percent of Detroit's residential spaces are empty, abandoned, yeah, vacant. Yeah.
7:05
Speaker 1: Like remember the Silver Dome deal, know, the where the
7:08
Speaker 1: Detroit Lions played since nineteen seventy five. It cost fifty
7:12
Speaker 1: five million bucks to build it in nineteen and it's
7:15
Speaker 1: sold in two thousand nine for five hundred and eighty
7:18
Speaker 1: three thousand. Yeah, what do they do with it? The
7:23
Speaker 1: dude is fixing it? Up apparently, and they have had
7:26
Speaker 1: like a friendly soccer match there and a monster truck
7:29
Speaker 1: jam there. He's reinvesting in it. Um, that's good. Apparently
7:34
Speaker 1: it's going to live. But the dude steel like feels
7:36
Speaker 1: a twenty million dollar deal that fell apart and then
7:40
Speaker 1: this guyot for half a million bucks. That's all. He's
7:42
Speaker 1: just some dude. I'll bet he worth Hawaiian shirt. Uh. Yeah,
7:45
Speaker 1: I don't know what he wears. I would I don't know.
7:47
Speaker 1: For that much money, I would turn it into like
7:49
Speaker 1: the biggest house, the studio apartment, and I'll bet you're
7:52
Speaker 1: a heating built and kill you every winner. Yeah, I
7:55
Speaker 1: just built small fires the silver domes where I saw
7:58
Speaker 1: my first rodeo. Really Yeah, well you can probably see
8:02
Speaker 1: a rodeo there again probably or just livestock kind of
8:05
Speaker 1: grazing inside. Okay, so hold anament there. I think it's
8:09
Speaker 1: time for a message break. Uh, and we're back. So
8:18
Speaker 1: we're talking about the vacant homes. Like, there's a big
8:21
Speaker 1: difference between foreclosed homes and even like when it's in foreclosures,
8:26
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different aspects to it. Yeah, they
8:28
Speaker 1: can stay a foreclosure for years essentially be a vacant home.
8:32
Speaker 1: You can get your first letter um of an intent
8:35
Speaker 1: to foreclose. That means your house is in foreclosure. You
8:38
Speaker 1: can the the company who actually kicked you out could
8:41
Speaker 1: be bidding on it on the courthouse steps. That's the
8:44
Speaker 1: end of foreclosure. And there's a lot of stuff in between.
8:46
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of foreclosures that just don't go
8:49
Speaker 1: all the way through. So the house is technically still
8:53
Speaker 1: in foreclosure even though it hasn't been repossessed by the
8:57
Speaker 1: bank um and the person may still be living in
9:02
Speaker 1: there under those circumstances. So forth closed doesn't equal vacant.
9:05
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and it's there's So it's such a mess
9:07
Speaker 1: right now. Sometimes it's hard to even get anyone to
9:11
Speaker 1: claim ownership of some of these houses, like they don't
9:14
Speaker 1: know which because banks would sell the loans to other institutions,
9:16
Speaker 1: and sometimes it's already even tracked down, all right, who
9:19
Speaker 1: actually owns this place? Right exactly? So let me give
9:21
Speaker 1: you an instance. If you um own a home and
9:26
Speaker 1: the bank says, hey, you're behind on payments, we're gonna
9:28
Speaker 1: kick you out. Uh, you move out, they foreclosed, uh.
9:33
Speaker 1: And it comes down to the time when the sheriff's
9:36
Speaker 1: department holds an auction on the county steps. They steps
9:40
Speaker 1: to the county courthouse, and the bank doesn't show up
9:42
Speaker 1: to bid on it, and nobody does. That original owner
9:45
Speaker 1: who is out of the house still owns that house
9:49
Speaker 1: by right right, But that owner may have no idea
9:52
Speaker 1: because I mean, you don't necessarily follow up on the
9:54
Speaker 1: house that you were kicked out of five years ago.
9:57
Speaker 1: So they might not even know, and they've moved and
10:00
Speaker 1: they might not know that they own the house. The bank,
10:04
Speaker 1: even if they did foreclosed, may say that they don't
10:06
Speaker 1: technically own it. And the well reason these houses are
10:09
Speaker 1: hot potatoes is because all this time that property that's
10:12
Speaker 1: sitting there is accruing taxes yea, and eventually it may
10:16
Speaker 1: be worth less than the amount of taxes and leans
10:21
Speaker 1: against it, so that the people who actually own it
10:24
Speaker 1: don't want to claim possession of it because they're gonna
10:26
Speaker 1: have to pay all those things. So these houses just
10:29
Speaker 1: sit and eventually the concept of ownership over them fades. Yeah,
10:35
Speaker 1: that's that's the case with the house across the street
10:37
Speaker 1: from me. Um, here's the deal. We bought our house
10:40
Speaker 1: in foreclosure and are now turning it around, or we
10:43
Speaker 1: decided we're just gonna stay there forever because it's done
10:45
Speaker 1: some very great things with that. I appreciate that, um.
10:48
Speaker 1: But across the street is a house has been vacant
10:51
Speaker 1: since we moved in eight years ago or whatever, and
10:56
Speaker 1: every couple of months, this lady would come by in
10:58
Speaker 1: a truck with the dude with the lawmower to cut
11:00
Speaker 1: the grass. She would sit in a truck and then
11:01
Speaker 1: they would leave. And that's only action I've ever seen.
11:04
Speaker 1: They quit doing that. So it's looks like you would
11:07
Speaker 1: anticipate a house looking has been cared for for at
11:10
Speaker 1: least a year. It's all overgrown, weeds, plants growing into
11:14
Speaker 1: the house. The rear of the house is busted out
11:18
Speaker 1: at the bottom so like people can get in and out,
11:20
Speaker 1: and supposedly there's been like vagrants sleeping in there. I
11:23
Speaker 1: haven't verified this, but that's like you know, the neighborhood rumors.
11:27
Speaker 1: So it's a derrelict house. And one of the neighbors
11:30
Speaker 1: I think filed which we'll talk about with the county
11:32
Speaker 1: to like get something done. And apparently there are some
11:34
Speaker 1: back taxes OWD. So this lady may be washing her
11:37
Speaker 1: hands of it. Just the very fact that there's a
11:39
Speaker 1: house built on a piece of property that somebody owns
11:42
Speaker 1: means that there's taxes accruing. And now that your neighbor
11:46
Speaker 1: called the called code services and co code enforcement, that
11:49
Speaker 1: means that they're going to come out and start writing
11:51
Speaker 1: tickets assessments against the house, like for the law not
11:55
Speaker 1: being cut, for being some sort of NUIs sense, like
11:58
Speaker 1: maybe there's fired Codevilla la whatever, water problems, and there's
12:02
Speaker 1: like rats and stuff. Now like you if your house floods,
12:05
Speaker 1: you have to buy law clear it out, and if
12:06
Speaker 1: you don't, they assess against you. And so all these
12:10
Speaker 1: things just add up to the amount of money that
12:12
Speaker 1: somebody would have to pay to gain full and free
12:15
Speaker 1: possession of this house, which makes it even more unattractive.
12:19
Speaker 1: So it's like this vicious cycle that's going on pretty much.
12:22
Speaker 1: And you you um kind of hit the nail on
12:25
Speaker 1: the head with mentioning that vagrants are possibly living in there.
12:30
Speaker 1: Because the one of the biggest problems, rather than you know,
12:33
Speaker 1: vermin or flooding or you know, the mosquitoes that develop
12:38
Speaker 1: and in long tall, uncut grass, is the fact that
12:43
Speaker 1: abandoned houses tend to attract crime. Yeah, uh in a
12:47
Speaker 1: big way. UM. What do we have some stats here
12:50
Speaker 1: from Queens, New York between two thousand and six and
12:53
Speaker 1: two thousand eight. UM, In two thousand eight, neighborhoods and
12:57
Speaker 1: Queens that had high foreclosure rates at an average of
13:00
Speaker 1: four D twenty four more burglaries, robberies, and murders and
13:04
Speaker 1: auto thefts than in areas with lower foreclosure rates. That's
13:08
Speaker 1: up a hundred and fifty in two years. And that's
13:12
Speaker 1: in Queens, which is transitional in parts but not a
13:15
Speaker 1: bad neighborhood at all. Uh. And apparently in Detroit, in
13:19
Speaker 1: what was Mitt Romney's old childhood home, like really nice neighborhood.
13:24
Speaker 1: Apparently crime increases in these neighborhoods as well, at about
13:27
Speaker 1: the same rate, not aggregate number of crimes, but at
13:31
Speaker 1: the same percentage increase. I think right, that's a big um.
13:35
Speaker 1: That's a big finding. Um. Apparently they raised Mitt Romney's
13:39
Speaker 1: birthplace birthplace home in Detroit. But the um, there's this
13:44
Speaker 1: whole idea. UM it's called broken windows theory. And these
13:48
Speaker 1: two guys named um oh, George Kelling and James Wilson
13:54
Speaker 1: came up with this idea that UM, if you police
13:59
Speaker 1: small off like if you, if you, if you like
14:02
Speaker 1: really throw the pickpockets in jail, and like write tickets
14:06
Speaker 1: to teenagers who are like playing their music too loud,
14:10
Speaker 1: and make sure that the broken windows and like a
14:13
Speaker 1: house are repaired. Like you kind of sustained the sense
14:18
Speaker 1: of order, and from order, you know, comes the abidment
14:23
Speaker 1: of law supposedly, so it trickles up pretty much. Yeah,
14:27
Speaker 1: it is this paying attention to the small stuff supposedly
14:29
Speaker 1: has an effect on the big stuff. It makes total sense, um,
14:34
Speaker 1: But studies have kind of found, like there's not a
14:36
Speaker 1: lot of actual quantitative evidence backing this up necessarily, but
14:41
Speaker 1: it creates this mindset um they think that possibly, like
14:45
Speaker 1: everyone points to Times Square, so like the police commissioner
14:49
Speaker 1: who came in with Giuliani and like cleaned up Times Square,
14:53
Speaker 1: he was in the broken windows. I can't even imagine now,
14:58
Speaker 1: I never went to Time Square and it was like
15:00
Speaker 1: that I saw the tail end of it. I can't
15:02
Speaker 1: imagine what it must have been like. If you watch
15:05
Speaker 1: basket Case, he's walking around Times Square, It's like that's
15:08
Speaker 1: Times Square, that's Times Squire's crazy. You know, where's the
15:12
Speaker 1: Disney store exactly? Um, but so the commissioner was into
15:16
Speaker 1: broken windows policing, and they very firmly believe like that's
15:21
Speaker 1: what cleaned up Times Square. A lot of people say, well,
15:24
Speaker 1: maybe it was the end of the crack epidemic. Maybe
15:26
Speaker 1: that cleaned up Times Square. Maybe it was lead got
15:29
Speaker 1: out of our our brains. Remember that one, Remember that
15:34
Speaker 1: the real criminal element lead from Mother Jones is awesome
15:38
Speaker 1: article that ties together the decline and crime in New
15:42
Speaker 1: York and elsewhere to the decline and the prevalence of
15:45
Speaker 1: lead in like our air in the world. Um So,
15:48
Speaker 1: there's a lot of other things that it could be.
15:51
Speaker 1: But there's this idea that if you if you fix
15:54
Speaker 1: the windows in an abandoned home, the crime will decrease.
15:58
Speaker 1: But like you said, they find the same amount of
16:00
Speaker 1: crime in nice areas or you know, already low income areas. Yeah,
16:07
Speaker 1: I think it's the same increase in crime rate because
16:09
Speaker 1: I don't think there's no way it could be the
16:10
Speaker 1: same amount of crime right once the house is vacated there,
16:14
Speaker 1: So like even if you live in a good neighborhood,
16:16
Speaker 1: you're still going to see like if that half a
16:18
Speaker 1: million dollar home is vacant, you're gonna see increasing crime. Yeah,
16:21
Speaker 1: and that kind of supports that broken windows theory. Yeah,
16:24
Speaker 1: is that true, though, I just have a hard time
16:25
Speaker 1: believing that, Um, percentage wise, it could probably be the same. Yeah,
16:30
Speaker 1: because think about it. If you have, like, um, I'm
16:32
Speaker 1: just trying to picture my brother's neighborhood and like, if
16:34
Speaker 1: there were a couple of empty homes there, like there
16:37
Speaker 1: wouldn't be like rapes and murders and drug deals going
16:40
Speaker 1: down there. Well, think about this if you if you
16:43
Speaker 1: he lives in a nice neighborhood. At my point, if
16:45
Speaker 1: you have, like, if you have like ten burglaries in
16:48
Speaker 1: an area and the a new abandoned house opens up,
16:53
Speaker 1: ten more burglaries happen, it's a increase. If you have
16:57
Speaker 1: one burglary in an area and open abandoned how opens
17:00
Speaker 1: up in a high income here you have one, that's
17:02
Speaker 1: another increase. I can buy that statistics, you know. Yeah,
17:06
Speaker 1: I hear you, But it does make sense. Yeah. Yeah.
17:09
Speaker 1: The reason why is because an abandoned home attracts people
17:11
Speaker 1: who normally, um might not have a place to congregate
17:15
Speaker 1: and carry out illegal activity. Yeah, do drugs squat I'm
17:20
Speaker 1: not gonna judge squatters, but a right uh, so what
17:24
Speaker 1: can you do. We realize it's a blade on the neighborhood,
17:27
Speaker 1: crime goes up. It's no good for anyone we feel
17:29
Speaker 1: sorry for, you know, if it is a family that
17:32
Speaker 1: couldn't afford their house, it's very sad. And actually, actually
17:35
Speaker 1: the house next to this one, I do feel really
17:38
Speaker 1: bad because his family lived there for a long time.
17:40
Speaker 1: The guy was a trucker and out of nowhere. One
17:43
Speaker 1: week I looked up and noticed the truck wasn't in
17:45
Speaker 1: the driveway, and no furniture was in the house, and
17:49
Speaker 1: there was like, you know, sheet of paper tape to
17:51
Speaker 1: the front door. It's a good out. I don't know
17:54
Speaker 1: what it said. I guess I'm not sure what the
17:56
Speaker 1: deal is, but you can get this guy. You should
17:57
Speaker 1: tell him that he may still own that house. I
18:00
Speaker 1: don't know if he owned it though, to be honest,
18:01
Speaker 1: he may have been a renter. Oh well, that's another thing, like, yeah,
18:04
Speaker 1: if you're renting in somethings forth clothes on your well. Yeah,
18:08
Speaker 1: but this lady I know did own the house and
18:10
Speaker 1: possibly good news. Just yesterday I saw two dudes checking
18:14
Speaker 1: it out, and of course I hustle out there and
18:16
Speaker 1: was like, hey, dude, are you going to buy this house?
18:18
Speaker 1: And he was being ky. I think he totally is,
18:21
Speaker 1: but he said maybe someone sure is and I said great.
18:26
Speaker 1: I guess he was trying to like, good to meet you,
18:28
Speaker 1: a weirdo, sniff me off the case or something, and
18:31
Speaker 1: sniff off the case. There's never been like an older adage,
18:36
Speaker 1: or it's actually not old. He's made it up. But um, yeah,
18:42
Speaker 1: he was trying to get me off his case, I think.
18:46
Speaker 1: And so I was like, dude, please buy this house
18:48
Speaker 1: and fix it up. But that's what we're after here. Yeah,
18:51
Speaker 1: he's going to hit you up for a subsidy. Now
18:53
Speaker 1: I don't know, played all your cards. So what do
18:56
Speaker 1: you do. Let's say that guy had never showed up
18:57
Speaker 1: and you had not one but to abandoned homes in
18:59
Speaker 1: the neighborhoods. Well, you could do what I think the
19:02
Speaker 1: next door neighbor to the house did, which was called
19:03
Speaker 1: the county and here they called it a Darryl house.
19:07
Speaker 1: I guess, um, you would just call the code enforcement
19:10
Speaker 1: officer and explain the situation and they will, you know,
19:14
Speaker 1: six months later, probably start to do some investigating as
19:17
Speaker 1: to the back taxes, who owns it, what, like state
19:21
Speaker 1: it's in, Yeah, inspections, that kind of thing exactly, and
19:24
Speaker 1: then they'll start writing tickets against it, and there'll be
19:26
Speaker 1: more and more leans try to find the owner um,
19:29
Speaker 1: and like we said, that can get very very difficult.
19:32
Speaker 1: And then even when you find the owner, it may
19:34
Speaker 1: be an LLC that disbanded and no longer has any
19:37
Speaker 1: legal obligation to to claim ownership of that place. Um.
19:42
Speaker 1: And at that point when it becomes unclear as to
19:46
Speaker 1: who owns the place um. Some counties is becoming such
19:50
Speaker 1: a problem that some counties are setting up land trusts, yeah,
19:54
Speaker 1: where like they'll take a certain percentage of property taxes,
19:58
Speaker 1: especially ones that are like back taxes that are paid,
20:02
Speaker 1: Like when that guy across the street buys that house,
20:05
Speaker 1: he's gonna have to pay those taxes in addition to
20:08
Speaker 1: to purchasing it. So even if the county takes possession
20:12
Speaker 1: that somebody is still gonna have to pay those back
20:14
Speaker 1: taxes usually, right, Yeah, So the county might take like
20:18
Speaker 1: five percent of those and set it aside into this
20:20
Speaker 1: land trust for for houses that no one will ever claim,
20:23
Speaker 1: and they'll either use it to raise the place to
20:27
Speaker 1: rehabilitate the place, um. Maybe they'll use it to subsidize
20:31
Speaker 1: a community development group that wants to turn it into
20:33
Speaker 1: a community center. There's a lot of like new ideas
20:36
Speaker 1: that people are, you know, coming up with to handle
20:39
Speaker 1: abandoned properties because it's becoming such a problem. Well, it's
20:43
Speaker 1: definitely hard to wrap your head around as an American
20:46
Speaker 1: there being that many homeless people and that many abandoned homes.
20:49
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying no, just move all the homeless
20:51
Speaker 1: people in there, because it's way more complicated than that, obviously,
20:53
Speaker 1: but it's definitely kind of weird to think about. Well. Yeah, well,
20:57
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's so complicated. Like even if you said,
20:59
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm tired of this, I'm gonna go
21:00
Speaker 1: across the street and mow the lawn. You could be sued. Yeah,
21:05
Speaker 1: you could be sued. If you hurt yourself, you could
21:07
Speaker 1: be arrested for trespassing. If you hurt yourself, you could
21:10
Speaker 1: be sued, you could be liable for insurance on the property.
21:13
Speaker 1: There's a lot of like it's extremely complex and it's
21:17
Speaker 1: extremely intricate, and then throw into the mix that you
21:19
Speaker 1: might not know who the owner is. Yeah, and nobody
21:22
Speaker 1: wants to touch this place. What if I snuck over
21:26
Speaker 1: in the dead of night to steal an azalea bush?
21:30
Speaker 1: What does the law say about that? Probably trespassing and theft. Okay,
21:34
Speaker 1: but it's all petty. I haven't done that. Just don't
21:36
Speaker 1: break your ankle on the property that threatened to do that, Well,
21:40
Speaker 1: don't because that'll be bad for you. It's really it's
21:42
Speaker 1: like the nicest plant on that and there's only one
21:45
Speaker 1: nice plan on the property. I feel like that may
21:48
Speaker 1: be a trophy for having to look at this place. Yeah,
21:51
Speaker 1: maybe we'll see. Yeah, I don't know. If that thing disappears,
21:55
Speaker 1: it's not my faulty. Even though it's in your backyard.
21:59
Speaker 1: To some planet, it would definitely not be in my
22:00
Speaker 1: right yard. Um, you got anything else? Um? Yeah, Well,
22:05
Speaker 1: we talked about Detroit Um to open the show and
22:08
Speaker 1: the fact that they have a lot of houses that
22:10
Speaker 1: they are raising. That's how they're taking care of their problem.
22:12
Speaker 1: Just yesterday, the city has decided to uh utilize about
22:18
Speaker 1: a hundred million dollars and unused federal funds originally intended
22:22
Speaker 1: to prevent foreclosures to quote aggressively address blight. That's what
22:27
Speaker 1: the Governor, Rick Snyder said, yesterday and they're gonna use
22:31
Speaker 1: some of that money and they planned to UH finance
22:34
Speaker 1: the demolition of about four thousand structures. And that's just
22:37
Speaker 1: the Michigan State Housing Development Authority. There's another effort going
22:41
Speaker 1: on that is on track to demolish ten thousand abandoned
22:43
Speaker 1: houses by the end of the first full term. Would
22:46
Speaker 1: be significant. Yeah, that would be fourteen out of eighty
22:50
Speaker 1: to nine thousand. Well plus also the three thousand that
22:53
Speaker 1: Detroit already so close to twenty and then they're about
22:57
Speaker 1: a quarter of the way there. There was the I
23:00
Speaker 1: don't know if you read the article I sent you,
23:02
Speaker 1: um from Dayton, there was this lady. She she found
23:07
Speaker 1: she was kicked out of her house. Um, the foreclosure
23:10
Speaker 1: process was never followed through on, so she actually still
23:13
Speaker 1: owned the place and she got in touch with her
23:16
Speaker 1: She somehow found out I guess like maybe a code
23:19
Speaker 1: enforcement officer contacted or about back taxes or whatever. So
23:22
Speaker 1: she got in touch with her bank and then basically
23:26
Speaker 1: renegotiated her loan and after five years was able to
23:29
Speaker 1: move back into her house. Wow. The only thing was
23:32
Speaker 1: she was kicking herself, like I just spent five years
23:35
Speaker 1: paying rent when I could have been paying down this mortgage,
23:37
Speaker 1: which sucks. But you know she found her way back
23:40
Speaker 1: to her house after like five years, which is pretty cool.
23:43
Speaker 1: It's a nice silver lining to shut up about the rent. Right.
23:47
Speaker 1: Happy you got your house back? Yeah, uh, I got
23:50
Speaker 1: nothing else, okay. Uh. If you want to learn more
23:52
Speaker 1: about Abandon Holmes, you can type that word those words
23:57
Speaker 1: into uh the sir bar stuff works dot com. You
24:02
Speaker 1: can also type in sniff me off the case. See
24:06
Speaker 1: what happens. Man. I'm curious about that one I just
24:09
Speaker 1: made up. I'm gonna officially like, how do you claim that? Can?
24:14
Speaker 1: You can I copyright that somehow? Um? Yeah, just write
24:19
Speaker 1: it down on a letter and mail it to yourself,
24:21
Speaker 1: mail it to you. It's it's an iron clad legally alright.
24:25
Speaker 1: Um so I think I said iron clad, which means
24:28
Speaker 1: it's time for a message break and now it's listening
24:35
Speaker 1: to mail time. Great. I'm gonna call this grunge beef.
24:40
Speaker 1: Remember we talked a little bit about Sound Garden, sound
24:43
Speaker 1: Garden and Pearl Jam and all those bands and oh
24:45
Speaker 1: how they didn't like each other. Yeah, apparently someone's gotta
24:48
Speaker 1: beef with that Paul Hilt of Waukisha, Wisconsin. Guys, I'm
24:54
Speaker 1: a longtime fan and extremely important bone to pick regarding
24:57
Speaker 1: the Trees podcast, He's gonna sniff us off the case.
25:01
Speaker 1: I feel I need to let you know that the
25:02
Speaker 1: members of Pearl Jam and Sound Garden and their respective
25:05
Speaker 1: fans have always had a friendly relationship. You may recall
25:08
Speaker 1: that the short lived Temple of the Dog Remember Them Yeah,
25:12
Speaker 1: tribute band to late Andrew Wood, lead singer of Mother
25:14
Speaker 1: Love Bone, consisted of the members of Bolk Pearl Jam
25:17
Speaker 1: songs Eddie Vetter with Chris Cornell on vocals, although Eddie
25:21
Speaker 1: Better did sing in their most popular song, that one
25:24
Speaker 1: about Stephen Brett Yeah hunder strike Um. Chris Cornell was
25:29
Speaker 1: also briefly a roommate of one of the members of
25:31
Speaker 1: Pearl Jam in the pre crunge era of early nineties Seattle.
25:35
Speaker 1: I forget exactly which one at the moment. Additionally, Matt Cameron,
25:39
Speaker 1: the original drummer for Sound Garden, has been Pearl Jams
25:41
Speaker 1: drummer for the last fifteen years. I did this while
25:44
Speaker 1: I'm at it. Members of Alison Chains and Pearl Jam
25:46
Speaker 1: also collaborated in the so called supergroup Mike McCready p
25:50
Speaker 1: j's Pearl James guitarist and Lane Staley were both part
25:53
Speaker 1: of Mad Season Remember Them, which is recently released a
25:58
Speaker 1: deluxe remaster box set of their only studio album. Above,
26:02
Speaker 1: it was Nirvana and Pearl Jan that had the so
26:05
Speaker 1: called rivalry in the nineties. Josh. The rivalry mostly consisted
26:08
Speaker 1: on the part of the fans was inspired by many
26:12
Speaker 1: of Kurt Cobain's jabs at Pearl Jam for being a
26:14
Speaker 1: quote corporate rock band. Take that, Pearl Jam. Hopefully you'll
26:20
Speaker 1: excuse the grunge ERAa nerd um of this email. But
26:23
Speaker 1: this is a topic that it's very close to my
26:25
Speaker 1: rapidly fading youth, and it's Friday and I don't want
26:27
Speaker 1: to work. If you enjoy the history of this area,
26:31
Speaker 1: I highly recommend the Cameron Crow produced and directed documentary
26:35
Speaker 1: p J twenty for calling the twenty year history the pajamas.
26:39
Speaker 1: Oh wait, Pearl Jam. If the history doesn't interest you
26:43
Speaker 1: at all, there's still lots of good music I have
26:44
Speaker 1: been made gazing that. Thanks for all the great work,
26:47
Speaker 1: even if it prevents me from doing my own work.
26:49
Speaker 1: Paul hilt Uh while Kesha, Wisconsin, I think so Hey,
26:56
Speaker 1: thank you Paul Hilt. We appreciate the lesson. It's nice.
26:59
Speaker 1: We were just kidding, but thank you. I'm glad it's
27:01
Speaker 1: fawing this little history lesson. It was Nirvana. I forgot
27:06
Speaker 1: about Nirvana and Pearl Jam having a little, a little friction.
27:09
Speaker 1: Let me see how that ended. Yeah, Pearl Jam got
27:12
Speaker 1: a documentary made about their twenty years and Nirvanna went away.
27:16
Speaker 1: Nirvana went on becoming cold band forever. That's right. Uh,
27:20
Speaker 1: let's see if you want to give us a little
27:22
Speaker 1: history lesson. We love those things. They're awesome. Like seriously,
27:25
Speaker 1: please send us on. This isn't just me coming up
27:27
Speaker 1: with an easy sign off. Um, you can tweet to us.
27:32
Speaker 1: It would be a pretty short history lesson. But you
27:34
Speaker 1: can send us something to s y s K podcast.
27:37
Speaker 1: That's our Twitter handle. You can post on our Facebook page,
27:41
Speaker 1: which is Stuff you Should Know. You can send us
27:44
Speaker 1: an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com. You
27:47
Speaker 1: can hang out with us on our home on the web.
27:50
Speaker 1: Our website it's called Stuff you Should Know dot com
27:58
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
28:01
Speaker 1: it how Stuff works dot Com. Now that the show
28:10
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