Seattle program to track vacant buildings an effort to bolster neighborhood safety
Seattle's program to track vacant buildings that have a history of trouble is putting new strains on the city's resources even as a monitoring program that works to keep each location sealed up and safe is facing difficulty because some property owners are not pitching in.
Vacant buildings that fall into disrepair can be a magnet for illegal behavior and pose a safety hazards.
“There was a fire in there at one point which puts our property at risk because if this whole thing burns down what are we going to do?” said Daniel Dimas, whose workplace adjoins an empty commercial property now occupied by squatters. “You can smell drugs from this side. I'm sure they've tapped into the electricity somehow because they're listening to TV or radios or whatever."
In 2019, Seattle rolled out a revamped program to catalog and track sites that were generating multiple nuisance complaints.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/seattle-program-to-track-vacant-buildings-an-effort-to-bolster-neighborhood-safety/ar-BB1dVxdu?ocid=hplocalnews