Join leftist political cartoonist on a walking tour of his Manhattan neighborhood as he illustrates a major problem politicians aren’t doing anything about.
Across the United States, greedy landlords leave storefronts empty for years at a time because they refuse to rent at market rates. Why should neighborhoods rot away while basic needs go unmet? Landlords don’t have the right to waste precious resources. Cities should use eminent domain to seize or requisition these spaces for the good of the community, either temporarily or permanently.
3 Comments.
How can a landlord afford to warehouse a property? Wouldn’t taxes, upkeep and so forth force a landlord to rent?
Also, I like the idea of homeless shelters but I don’t think these buildings can just be converted easily. Nor do I think you can just stick homeless people in and hope for the best. You need an infrastructure of support that we used to have until Reagan closed it all down. So, as usual, we’d need liberals to do the one thing they are truly incapable of, making a plan, sticking to it, and demanding it be done. “Okay, let’s get the homeless of the street! … And here we are, two weeks later and we’ve lost Roe v. Wade. Okay, time to compromise!!!”
” Wouldn’t taxes, upkeep and so forth force a landlord to rent?”
Nope, an empty building gets little wear and tear. Go talk to Louis Rossmann of Rossmann Repair; he lived in NYC for most of his life and his YouTube channel is full of videos of empty storefronts in Manhattan, because he was trying to relocate his shop. Rossmann finally moved….to Austin, Texas.
Bizarre. I’d be terrified that an empty building would attract vagrants, drug addicts, etc., who’d strip the wires out of the walls and set fires.