City Tackles Abandoned Property Problem

The City of Buffalo is home to as many as 18,000 vacant buildings, and Mayor Byron Brown wants 5,000 of them knocked down in the next five years. Last year, 60 percent of city arson fires were set in vacant and abandoned buildings, and 27 firefighters were injured battling those blazes. The buildings are havens for drugs and vandalism, and at least seven dead bodies have been discovered in or around vacant buildings in Buffalo over the last two years. Opponents of wide scale demolition argue that the city should focus more on rehabbing vacant homes and reselling them to first-time home buyers.