Seattle Adult Entertainment: To help neighborhoods, don’t let vacant buildings shelter undesirable elements
Instead of the promised grocery store on the ground floor, the neighborhood will get a drugs-and-prostitution mini-mall.
If the builder still owns it, it’s unlikely he has the means to make it impregnable to people who’d like a nice dry place to cook their drugs, pass out and defecate.
If a bank owns it? Well, we’ve seen how banks protect neighborhoods in which they hold foreclosed homes.
The vacancy is nothing new, but the private ownership is a switch.
In that part of Tacoma, we the people have owned the most spectacularly derelict buildings of the recent past.
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Suddenly, prostitutes could work in dry places. People could cook their drugs inside. Firefighters had to go into increasingly weakened buildings, stepping on needles and in feces in the smoke and flames, to make sure no one was passed out inside.