Harrisburg; statistics on abandoned and condemned buildings

I wrote earlier about Harrisburg's use of the National Guard to board up abandoned houses in the City.

The same news story that discussed the National Guard operation also revealed interesting information about the state of housing in Harrisburg.

Harrisburg apparently contains the following:

• 1,500 abandoned buildings
• 835 of which have been condemned by the City
• 324 of those buildings are scheduled to be torn down
  

(The National Guard boarded up 15 homes last week).

I know from prior discussions that the City owns roughly 500 properties that could not be sold at various prior tax sales. These buildings now suffer from title defects that hinder any potential sale. I do not know whether any of the abandoned and condemned buildings are included in the 500 city-owned properties.

The destruction of large numbers of abandoned buildings sounds like a small scale version of what is happening in Detroit. No plans have been announced to convert large areas of Harrisburg to agriculture.