Housing
Tracking Blight in America's Hardest-Hit Cities
Where property abandonment is growing and declining.
Empty, ugly, problematic homes are a persistent pest for cities. Marring the landscape and seemingly spreading like an infestation, these blighted properties feed into a cycle of decline that can be hard to escape from.
And for some cities, the problem is indeed getting worse. According to a new report out from the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, the Michigan cities of Flint and Detroit have the highest rates of blight in the country. The report, based on information from the U.S. Postal Service covering only a handful of cities, is not comprehensive, but focuses on those cities most hard-hit by blight – a list that also includes Youngstown, Baltimore, Cleveland, and New Orleans.