Substance or Fluff: The Mayor's Anti-Blight Initiative

Today I saw Mayor Wharton made an announcement that 139 property owners will be getting sued by the city. This seems like a positive step, but how effective will it be. There are literally thousands of empty houses in the city. Many are like these properties, owned by individuals or small property owners. Yet, the biggest problem are bank owned properties. There are hundreds that have been empty for a couple years or more. In the channel 3 news story, Kelli Rabon brings up this very issue. Here is the story. Now it isn't hard finding plenty of bank owned properties with liens on them. Mid-South Peace & Justice was able to find $60,000 in back taxes/code violations and then directly confronted Wells Fargo about their bad neighbor policies last week. If Mid-South Peace & Justice can get $60,000 out of a major bank for local government, what is the city doing to go after all those other banks like Deutsche and others? Apparently not much, because there is only one bank owned property out of the 139. So the city is going after the lowest hanging fruit by suing small property owners. That's ok, but by pursuing these small fish, is the city give the big blight makers a chance to get away.
There is an old saying, good policy makes good politics. This doesn't look like good policy because the city hasn't addressed comprehensive code reform nor thought through what to do with the thousands of vacant lots which still blight the city after the dilapidated structure gets knocked down. Nice Dog & Pony today though.