Detroit to launch website to auction houses for rehab | The Detroit News

Of course, Detroit's problems with slum, blight and vacant homes is on a much larger scale than what we face in Lake Worth. However, some of the ideas about repopulating vacant homes and blighted neighborhoods that work there, may work here as well.. Click title for link for the Detroit News article:

Last week, Duggan announced a neighborhood rebuilding program using federal funds in which owners are put on notice that the land bank intends to seize the homes through legal action unless they make arrangements to fix them up. The land bank will get the title in about 90 days and then auction homes that are salvageable.
The program is modeled after a similar program Duggan ran when he was the Wayne County prosecutor from 2001-03. Duggan pledged to create the program while running for mayor last summer. The initiative had 1,000 abandoned homes fixed up.

Talmer Bank also has committed $1 million to those who buy houses in the land bank auction. Talmer will provide homeowners who win the bids with a $25,000 loan forgivable at the rate of $5,000 per year. The loan forgiveness is up to a maximum of five years for each year the buyer continues to live in the home.

On Wednesday, the Detroit Land Bank Authority posted notices on 79 vacant homes in a roughly 16-block area on the city’s northwest side in the area bounded by Marygrove to the north, Puritan on the south, Greenlawn to the east and Wyoming on the west.
During the announcement, Duggan called the initiative a “bold experiment” to fix city neighborhoods and pledged the area will be noticeably different in 90 days.
“This is a historic change in Detroit’s strategy in fighting blight,” Duggan said. “We are getting away from this mindless process of demolishing everything that’s vacant. What’s different is we are attacking the entire neighborhood at once.”