Houses for $1

So I was listening to NPR on the way to school this morning and I heard this report about cities with diminishing populations giving away abandoned houses and the property they are on to the neighbors living next door. The city reported on was Flint, MI (former home of a huge GM plant that closed and Michael Moore's documentary Roger and Me). The issue was that many of these abandoned homes were being used for all the illicit activities that no one wants to live next to, so the city decided to just hand the property over to the neighbors figuring that they, out of anyone, care the most about what's going on there. The city tried to auction off these abandoned properties but they weren't getting enough for them to be worth their time and resources so they just gave them away. In addition, the city is also converting condemned properties to neighborhood parks, rarely ever a bad thing. As a young, financially insecure hopeful physician who wants to work the indigent population and who wants to own a home someday this really appeals to me. Now, I'm pretty sure these homes and properties they are giving away are not in the most affluents parts of Flint, but with this change these neighborhoods will become a little more agrarian and I think add a lot to the quality and aesthetics of life there. Anyway, some other cities they mentioned that are doing this same thing are Little Rock and New Orleans. The mayor of Flint referred to his city's weakening economy as a "gradual Katrina stretched over 35 years". That's a pretty powerful metaphor. Now, I don't really want to move anywhere north of St. Louis, that was cold enough, but the idea of buying a home with a substantial amount of land in a city that probably needs physicians is appealing at least maybe for NO or LR. Well, just thought that was an interesting idea.