Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know from House Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. My
Speaker 1: name is Josh Clark and across from me is Charles
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant. And because of that, because it's the two
Speaker 1: of us, uh and Jerry, of course, um, you have
Speaker 1: stuff you should know? Okay, yeah, stop protesting us. It's
Speaker 1: a sweet little drifecta of people in here. Do my
Speaker 1: favorite people in this office? Two of my two favorite
Speaker 1: people are in this office, me and Jerry. You're doing
Speaker 1: all right? Yeah? Man, I know for a fact that
Speaker 1: you're not, Uh, because I have an abandoned house across
Speaker 1: from me. Do you really? Yeah, We're gonna work in
Speaker 1: some personal details here. Well that's good man, because um,
Speaker 1: I feel like if there's anything personal in this world,
Speaker 1: it's an empty, unused house. Okay, you know, especially one
Speaker 1: that's left in your neighborhood. Isn't that a big like
Speaker 1: f you to the rest of the people who live there? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I've actually got two side by side. Now. Oh that's delightful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's great man, because as you already understand, and now
Speaker 1: I understand from researching this, and our listeners will soon understand,
Speaker 1: that's a real problem. Yeah, just one is a real problem.
Speaker 1: Two side by side. You may want to run a bulldozer. Well,
Speaker 1: there may be a happy ending. Okay, we'll play it
Speaker 1: out dramatically over the course of the show. That's good man. Um,
Speaker 1: so we should probably set the set the stage for everybody.
Speaker 1: It's the early to mid two thousand's sweet. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: first decade, early to mid part of the first decade.
Speaker 1: I'm in Los Angeles. Yeah, okay, um, and the real
Speaker 1: estate boom is in full swing. Everybody's forgotten about the
Speaker 1: dot com bubble? What was that? That was a fluke?
Speaker 1: You know, Let's start investing in real estate. Will make
Speaker 1: it like nineteen twenties Florida. And these prices, sure do
Speaker 1: you seem exorbitant, but hey, I'm sure we'll make our
Speaker 1: money back. And this bubble just keeps growing and growing
Speaker 1: and growing, and people are buying like four or five
Speaker 1: six houses, and I mean like people, not not companies,
Speaker 1: like people who are just flipping it. Then all Ice
Speaker 1: gets a show about flipping um real estate, like, there's
Speaker 1: flipped this actually, well yeah, okay, it's still it came
Speaker 1: out of this and this bubble is just growing and
Speaker 1: growing and growing. Then all of a sudden, it just pops,
Speaker 1: and it popped because everybody figured out that the prices
Speaker 1: for the houses were more than they were worth. Bubble
Speaker 1: head grown. It was artificial, there was an artificial market,
Speaker 1: and everybody just kind of walked away. It was a
Speaker 1: truly fascinating it was. It was fascinating and scary, but
Speaker 1: also it was like just to watch it. I mean,
Speaker 1: we watched it, we chronicled, but argually so the bubble bursts.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of people, those speculators, investors and
Speaker 1: ordinary people who took out terrible, terrible loans and over
Speaker 1: extending themselves, um oftentimes with the hands of predators. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of people to blame. But there were a
Speaker 1: lot of houses that suddenly we're not worth what they
Speaker 1: had been paid for ye or house flippers that you know,
Speaker 1: maybe said my job, I kind of hate. I can
Speaker 1: flip a house. People are getting rich doing this, right
Speaker 1: And not only that, I can, actually the access to
Speaker 1: credit is so easy right now, I can afford six
Speaker 1: of them and take this kind of blighted area and
Speaker 1: fix these six houses up and just create a whole
Speaker 1: new neighborhood out of it, and some of those people
Speaker 1: were left not with a single family that just got
Speaker 1: burned or burn themselves on one house, but like, I've
Speaker 1: got six or seven houses now that I'm underwater on
Speaker 1: and I'm going to foreclose on all of them or
Speaker 1: maybe just leave. And that was enoughtion that a lot
Speaker 1: of people took. Here's the thing, a lot of those
Speaker 1: people did this under the guise of LLC's and so
Speaker 1: they didn't have to file for bankruptcy there. Their LLC
Speaker 1: just had to go away. Their liability was limited, exactly,
Speaker 1: it was very limited. Um. So there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people out there who just walked away from their houses.
Speaker 1: And those houses now this is two two nine, um.
Speaker 1: Those houses now are just sitting there abandoned in cities
Speaker 1: all over the country. Of course, Detroit has it worse,
Speaker 1: but there's a lot of other cities that have it
Speaker 1: pretty bad too. Um. And actually Detroit is kind of
Speaker 1: leading the way and figuring out what to do with
Speaker 1: these houses because right now they're sitting there. Even as
Speaker 1: the market recovers. The houses that are left over, that
Speaker 1: are abandoned are in really bad shape. So they're the
Speaker 1: ones that aren't going anywhere ever. And now we all
Speaker 1: have to figure out as a society what to do
Speaker 1: with these things. So who longs an abandoned house? Well,
Speaker 1: we'll get to that, Okay, I want some stats, all right,
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve, that's last year, two point three million
Speaker 1: homes were foreclosed on nationwide. Compare that to two thousand,
Speaker 1: four hundred and seventy thousand homes were foreclosed on. So
Speaker 1: it's quite a jump. Um, it looks like things peaked
Speaker 1: in two thousand eleven at about three point nine million
Speaker 1: homes in that year. Uh. And now we're kind of
Speaker 1: back down to like mid two thousand seven levels. Um.
Speaker 1: And then I just pulled this today Florida and they
Speaker 1: do this like monthly quarterly. Florida is in pretty bad
Speaker 1: shape right now. Like forget Detroit. Uh, they lead the
Speaker 1: country with UM one out of every one hundred and
Speaker 1: four housing units is in foreclosure in Florida. UM. Nevada
Speaker 1: is next at one in every one, fifteen, Illinois one
Speaker 1: and everyone seven, Ohio one and everyone eighty eight. And
Speaker 1: then Georgia one in every two hundred housing units is
Speaker 1: being foreclosed on. Yeah, and uh, Florida has I think
Speaker 1: four of the top five metropolitan areas in the country
Speaker 1: as well for just four closed homes. Yeah, Miami's number one, Orlando, Okalla, Jacksonville,
Speaker 1: and then Las Vegas is number four. So what is
Speaker 1: a bad shape? Although we are going to be talking
Speaker 1: about Detroit because this article talked about Detroit. Well, there's
Speaker 1: a big difference between and this is why Detroit comes up.
Speaker 1: Detroit probably has more empty houses, especially per capita, than
Speaker 1: any other city in in the country. And I think
Speaker 1: eighty thousand businesses factories are homes right now. So what
Speaker 1: I saw most recently was um, something liked and seventy
Speaker 1: two abandoned homes. Well, it probably depends on where engaged
Speaker 1: stats um. And that's out of something like three hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy thousand in total. Yeah, so something about like
Speaker 1: thirty six percent of Detroit's residential spaces are empty, abandoned, yeah, vacant. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like remember the Silver Dome deal, know, the where the
Speaker 1: Detroit Lions played since nineteen seventy five. It cost fifty
Speaker 1: five million bucks to build it in nineteen and it's
Speaker 1: sold in two thousand nine for five hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: three thousand. Yeah, what do they do with it? The
Speaker 1: dude is fixing it? Up apparently, and they have had
Speaker 1: like a friendly soccer match there and a monster truck
Speaker 1: jam there. He's reinvesting in it. Um, that's good. Apparently
Speaker 1: it's going to live. But the dude steel like feels
Speaker 1: a twenty million dollar deal that fell apart and then
Speaker 1: this guyot for half a million bucks. That's all. He's
Speaker 1: just some dude. I'll bet he worth Hawaiian shirt. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know what he wears. I would I don't know.
Speaker 1: For that much money, I would turn it into like
Speaker 1: the biggest house, the studio apartment, and I'll bet you're
Speaker 1: a heating built and kill you every winner. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: just built small fires the silver domes where I saw
Speaker 1: my first rodeo. Really Yeah, well you can probably see
Speaker 1: a rodeo there again probably or just livestock kind of
Speaker 1: grazing inside. Okay, so hold anament there. I think it's
Speaker 1: time for a message break. Uh, and we're back. So
Speaker 1: we're talking about the vacant homes. Like, there's a big
Speaker 1: difference between foreclosed homes and even like when it's in foreclosures,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different aspects to it. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: can stay a foreclosure for years essentially be a vacant home.
Speaker 1: You can get your first letter um of an intent
Speaker 1: to foreclose. That means your house is in foreclosure. You
Speaker 1: can the the company who actually kicked you out could
Speaker 1: be bidding on it on the courthouse steps. That's the
Speaker 1: end of foreclosure. And there's a lot of stuff in between.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of foreclosures that just don't go
Speaker 1: all the way through. So the house is technically still
Speaker 1: in foreclosure even though it hasn't been repossessed by the
Speaker 1: bank um and the person may still be living in
Speaker 1: there under those circumstances. So forth closed doesn't equal vacant.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and it's there's So it's such a mess
Speaker 1: right now. Sometimes it's hard to even get anyone to
Speaker 1: claim ownership of some of these houses, like they don't
Speaker 1: know which because banks would sell the loans to other institutions,
Speaker 1: and sometimes it's already even tracked down, all right, who
Speaker 1: actually owns this place? Right exactly? So let me give
Speaker 1: you an instance. If you um own a home and
Speaker 1: the bank says, hey, you're behind on payments, we're gonna
Speaker 1: kick you out. Uh, you move out, they foreclosed, uh.
Speaker 1: And it comes down to the time when the sheriff's
Speaker 1: department holds an auction on the county steps. They steps
Speaker 1: to the county courthouse, and the bank doesn't show up
Speaker 1: to bid on it, and nobody does. That original owner
Speaker 1: who is out of the house still owns that house
Speaker 1: by right right, But that owner may have no idea
Speaker 1: because I mean, you don't necessarily follow up on the
Speaker 1: house that you were kicked out of five years ago.
Speaker 1: So they might not even know, and they've moved and
Speaker 1: they might not know that they own the house. The bank,
Speaker 1: even if they did foreclosed, may say that they don't
Speaker 1: technically own it. And the well reason these houses are
Speaker 1: hot potatoes is because all this time that property that's
Speaker 1: sitting there is accruing taxes yea, and eventually it may
Speaker 1: be worth less than the amount of taxes and leans
Speaker 1: against it, so that the people who actually own it
Speaker 1: don't want to claim possession of it because they're gonna
Speaker 1: have to pay all those things. So these houses just
Speaker 1: sit and eventually the concept of ownership over them fades. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's the case with the house across the street
Speaker 1: from me. Um, here's the deal. We bought our house
Speaker 1: in foreclosure and are now turning it around, or we
Speaker 1: decided we're just gonna stay there forever because it's done
Speaker 1: some very great things with that. I appreciate that, um.
Speaker 1: But across the street is a house has been vacant
Speaker 1: since we moved in eight years ago or whatever, and
Speaker 1: every couple of months, this lady would come by in
Speaker 1: a truck with the dude with the lawmower to cut
Speaker 1: the grass. She would sit in a truck and then
Speaker 1: they would leave. And that's only action I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: They quit doing that. So it's looks like you would
Speaker 1: anticipate a house looking has been cared for for at
Speaker 1: least a year. It's all overgrown, weeds, plants growing into
Speaker 1: the house. The rear of the house is busted out
Speaker 1: at the bottom so like people can get in and out,
Speaker 1: and supposedly there's been like vagrants sleeping in there. I
Speaker 1: haven't verified this, but that's like you know, the neighborhood rumors.
Speaker 1: So it's a derrelict house. And one of the neighbors
Speaker 1: I think filed which we'll talk about with the county
Speaker 1: to like get something done. And apparently there are some
Speaker 1: back taxes OWD. So this lady may be washing her
Speaker 1: hands of it. Just the very fact that there's a
Speaker 1: house built on a piece of property that somebody owns
Speaker 1: means that there's taxes accruing. And now that your neighbor
Speaker 1: called the called code services and co code enforcement, that
Speaker 1: means that they're going to come out and start writing
Speaker 1: tickets assessments against the house, like for the law not
Speaker 1: being cut, for being some sort of NUIs sense, like
Speaker 1: maybe there's fired Codevilla la whatever, water problems, and there's
Speaker 1: like rats and stuff. Now like you if your house floods,
Speaker 1: you have to buy law clear it out, and if
Speaker 1: you don't, they assess against you. And so all these
Speaker 1: things just add up to the amount of money that
Speaker 1: somebody would have to pay to gain full and free
Speaker 1: possession of this house, which makes it even more unattractive.
Speaker 1: So it's like this vicious cycle that's going on pretty much.
Speaker 1: And you you um kind of hit the nail on
Speaker 1: the head with mentioning that vagrants are possibly living in there.
Speaker 1: Because the one of the biggest problems, rather than you know,
Speaker 1: vermin or flooding or you know, the mosquitoes that develop
Speaker 1: and in long tall, uncut grass, is the fact that
Speaker 1: abandoned houses tend to attract crime. Yeah, uh in a
Speaker 1: big way. UM. What do we have some stats here
Speaker 1: from Queens, New York between two thousand and six and
Speaker 1: two thousand eight. UM, In two thousand eight, neighborhoods and
Speaker 1: Queens that had high foreclosure rates at an average of
Speaker 1: four D twenty four more burglaries, robberies, and murders and
Speaker 1: auto thefts than in areas with lower foreclosure rates. That's
Speaker 1: up a hundred and fifty in two years. And that's
Speaker 1: in Queens, which is transitional in parts but not a
Speaker 1: bad neighborhood at all. Uh. And apparently in Detroit, in
Speaker 1: what was Mitt Romney's old childhood home, like really nice neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Apparently crime increases in these neighborhoods as well, at about
Speaker 1: the same rate, not aggregate number of crimes, but at
Speaker 1: the same percentage increase. I think right, that's a big um.
Speaker 1: That's a big finding. Um. Apparently they raised Mitt Romney's
Speaker 1: birthplace birthplace home in Detroit. But the um, there's this
Speaker 1: whole idea. UM it's called broken windows theory. And these
Speaker 1: two guys named um oh, George Kelling and James Wilson
Speaker 1: came up with this idea that UM, if you police
Speaker 1: small off like if you, if you, if you like
Speaker 1: really throw the pickpockets in jail, and like write tickets
Speaker 1: to teenagers who are like playing their music too loud,
Speaker 1: and make sure that the broken windows and like a
Speaker 1: house are repaired. Like you kind of sustained the sense
Speaker 1: of order, and from order, you know, comes the abidment
Speaker 1: of law supposedly, so it trickles up pretty much. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is this paying attention to the small stuff supposedly
Speaker 1: has an effect on the big stuff. It makes total sense, um,
Speaker 1: But studies have kind of found, like there's not a
Speaker 1: lot of actual quantitative evidence backing this up necessarily, but
Speaker 1: it creates this mindset um they think that possibly, like
Speaker 1: everyone points to Times Square, so like the police commissioner
Speaker 1: who came in with Giuliani and like cleaned up Times Square,
Speaker 1: he was in the broken windows. I can't even imagine now,
Speaker 1: I never went to Time Square and it was like
Speaker 1: that I saw the tail end of it. I can't
Speaker 1: imagine what it must have been like. If you watch
Speaker 1: basket Case, he's walking around Times Square, It's like that's
Speaker 1: Times Square, that's Times Squire's crazy. You know, where's the
Speaker 1: Disney store exactly? Um, but so the commissioner was into
Speaker 1: broken windows policing, and they very firmly believe like that's
Speaker 1: what cleaned up Times Square. A lot of people say, well,
Speaker 1: maybe it was the end of the crack epidemic. Maybe
Speaker 1: that cleaned up Times Square. Maybe it was lead got
Speaker 1: out of our our brains. Remember that one, Remember that
Speaker 1: the real criminal element lead from Mother Jones is awesome
Speaker 1: article that ties together the decline and crime in New
Speaker 1: York and elsewhere to the decline and the prevalence of
Speaker 1: lead in like our air in the world. Um So,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of other things that it could be.
Speaker 1: But there's this idea that if you if you fix
Speaker 1: the windows in an abandoned home, the crime will decrease.
Speaker 1: But like you said, they find the same amount of
Speaker 1: crime in nice areas or you know, already low income areas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's the same increase in crime rate because
Speaker 1: I don't think there's no way it could be the
Speaker 1: same amount of crime right once the house is vacated there,
Speaker 1: So like even if you live in a good neighborhood,
Speaker 1: you're still going to see like if that half a
Speaker 1: million dollar home is vacant, you're gonna see increasing crime. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that kind of supports that broken windows theory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: is that true, though, I just have a hard time
Speaker 1: believing that, Um, percentage wise, it could probably be the same. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because think about it. If you have, like, um, I'm
Speaker 1: just trying to picture my brother's neighborhood and like, if
Speaker 1: there were a couple of empty homes there, like there
Speaker 1: wouldn't be like rapes and murders and drug deals going
Speaker 1: down there. Well, think about this if you if you
Speaker 1: he lives in a nice neighborhood. At my point, if
Speaker 1: you have, like, if you have like ten burglaries in
Speaker 1: an area and the a new abandoned house opens up,
Speaker 1: ten more burglaries happen, it's a increase. If you have
Speaker 1: one burglary in an area and open abandoned how opens
Speaker 1: up in a high income here you have one, that's
Speaker 1: another increase. I can buy that statistics, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I hear you, But it does make sense. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The reason why is because an abandoned home attracts people
Speaker 1: who normally, um might not have a place to congregate
Speaker 1: and carry out illegal activity. Yeah, do drugs squat I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna judge squatters, but a right uh, so what
Speaker 1: can you do. We realize it's a blade on the neighborhood,
Speaker 1: crime goes up. It's no good for anyone we feel
Speaker 1: sorry for, you know, if it is a family that
Speaker 1: couldn't afford their house, it's very sad. And actually, actually
Speaker 1: the house next to this one, I do feel really
Speaker 1: bad because his family lived there for a long time.
Speaker 1: The guy was a trucker and out of nowhere. One
Speaker 1: week I looked up and noticed the truck wasn't in
Speaker 1: the driveway, and no furniture was in the house, and
Speaker 1: there was like, you know, sheet of paper tape to
Speaker 1: the front door. It's a good out. I don't know
Speaker 1: what it said. I guess I'm not sure what the
Speaker 1: deal is, but you can get this guy. You should
Speaker 1: tell him that he may still own that house. I
Speaker 1: don't know if he owned it though, to be honest,
Speaker 1: he may have been a renter. Oh well, that's another thing, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're renting in somethings forth clothes on your well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but this lady I know did own the house and
Speaker 1: possibly good news. Just yesterday I saw two dudes checking
Speaker 1: it out, and of course I hustle out there and
Speaker 1: was like, hey, dude, are you going to buy this house?
Speaker 1: And he was being ky. I think he totally is,
Speaker 1: but he said maybe someone sure is and I said great.
Speaker 1: I guess he was trying to like, good to meet you,
Speaker 1: a weirdo, sniff me off the case or something, and
Speaker 1: sniff off the case. There's never been like an older adage,
Speaker 1: or it's actually not old. He's made it up. But um, yeah,
Speaker 1: he was trying to get me off his case, I think.
Speaker 1: And so I was like, dude, please buy this house
Speaker 1: and fix it up. But that's what we're after here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's going to hit you up for a subsidy. Now
Speaker 1: I don't know, played all your cards. So what do
Speaker 1: you do. Let's say that guy had never showed up
Speaker 1: and you had not one but to abandoned homes in
Speaker 1: the neighborhoods. Well, you could do what I think the
Speaker 1: next door neighbor to the house did, which was called
Speaker 1: the county and here they called it a Darryl house.
Speaker 1: I guess, um, you would just call the code enforcement
Speaker 1: officer and explain the situation and they will, you know,
Speaker 1: six months later, probably start to do some investigating as
Speaker 1: to the back taxes, who owns it, what, like state
Speaker 1: it's in, Yeah, inspections, that kind of thing exactly, and
Speaker 1: then they'll start writing tickets against it, and there'll be
Speaker 1: more and more leans try to find the owner um,
Speaker 1: and like we said, that can get very very difficult.
Speaker 1: And then even when you find the owner, it may
Speaker 1: be an LLC that disbanded and no longer has any
Speaker 1: legal obligation to to claim ownership of that place. Um.
Speaker 1: And at that point when it becomes unclear as to
Speaker 1: who owns the place um. Some counties is becoming such
Speaker 1: a problem that some counties are setting up land trusts, yeah,
Speaker 1: where like they'll take a certain percentage of property taxes,
Speaker 1: especially ones that are like back taxes that are paid,
Speaker 1: Like when that guy across the street buys that house,
Speaker 1: he's gonna have to pay those taxes in addition to
Speaker 1: to purchasing it. So even if the county takes possession
Speaker 1: that somebody is still gonna have to pay those back
Speaker 1: taxes usually, right, Yeah, So the county might take like
Speaker 1: five percent of those and set it aside into this
Speaker 1: land trust for for houses that no one will ever claim,
Speaker 1: and they'll either use it to raise the place to
Speaker 1: rehabilitate the place, um. Maybe they'll use it to subsidize
Speaker 1: a community development group that wants to turn it into
Speaker 1: a community center. There's a lot of like new ideas
Speaker 1: that people are, you know, coming up with to handle
Speaker 1: abandoned properties because it's becoming such a problem. Well, it's
Speaker 1: definitely hard to wrap your head around as an American
Speaker 1: there being that many homeless people and that many abandoned homes.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying no, just move all the homeless
Speaker 1: people in there, because it's way more complicated than that, obviously,
Speaker 1: but it's definitely kind of weird to think about. Well. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's so complicated. Like even if you said,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm tired of this, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: across the street and mow the lawn. You could be sued. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you could be sued. If you hurt yourself, you could
Speaker 1: be arrested for trespassing. If you hurt yourself, you could
Speaker 1: be sued, you could be liable for insurance on the property.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of like it's extremely complex and it's
Speaker 1: extremely intricate, and then throw into the mix that you
Speaker 1: might not know who the owner is. Yeah, and nobody
Speaker 1: wants to touch this place. What if I snuck over
Speaker 1: in the dead of night to steal an azalea bush?
Speaker 1: What does the law say about that? Probably trespassing and theft. Okay,
Speaker 1: but it's all petty. I haven't done that. Just don't
Speaker 1: break your ankle on the property that threatened to do that, Well,
Speaker 1: don't because that'll be bad for you. It's really it's
Speaker 1: like the nicest plant on that and there's only one
Speaker 1: nice plan on the property. I feel like that may
Speaker 1: be a trophy for having to look at this place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe we'll see. Yeah, I don't know. If that thing disappears,
Speaker 1: it's not my faulty. Even though it's in your backyard.
Speaker 1: To some planet, it would definitely not be in my
Speaker 1: right yard. Um, you got anything else? Um? Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: we talked about Detroit Um to open the show and
Speaker 1: the fact that they have a lot of houses that
Speaker 1: they are raising. That's how they're taking care of their problem.
Speaker 1: Just yesterday, the city has decided to uh utilize about
Speaker 1: a hundred million dollars and unused federal funds originally intended
Speaker 1: to prevent foreclosures to quote aggressively address blight. That's what
Speaker 1: the Governor, Rick Snyder said, yesterday and they're gonna use
Speaker 1: some of that money and they planned to UH finance
Speaker 1: the demolition of about four thousand structures. And that's just
Speaker 1: the Michigan State Housing Development Authority. There's another effort going
Speaker 1: on that is on track to demolish ten thousand abandoned
Speaker 1: houses by the end of the first full term. Would
Speaker 1: be significant. Yeah, that would be fourteen out of eighty
Speaker 1: to nine thousand. Well plus also the three thousand that
Speaker 1: Detroit already so close to twenty and then they're about
Speaker 1: a quarter of the way there. There was the I
Speaker 1: don't know if you read the article I sent you,
Speaker 1: um from Dayton, there was this lady. She she found
Speaker 1: she was kicked out of her house. Um, the foreclosure
Speaker 1: process was never followed through on, so she actually still
Speaker 1: owned the place and she got in touch with her
Speaker 1: She somehow found out I guess like maybe a code
Speaker 1: enforcement officer contacted or about back taxes or whatever. So
Speaker 1: she got in touch with her bank and then basically
Speaker 1: renegotiated her loan and after five years was able to
Speaker 1: move back into her house. Wow. The only thing was
Speaker 1: she was kicking herself, like I just spent five years
Speaker 1: paying rent when I could have been paying down this mortgage,
Speaker 1: which sucks. But you know she found her way back
Speaker 1: to her house after like five years, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 1: It's a nice silver lining to shut up about the rent. Right.
Speaker 1: Happy you got your house back? Yeah, uh, I got
Speaker 1: nothing else, okay. Uh. If you want to learn more
Speaker 1: about Abandon Holmes, you can type that word those words
Speaker 1: into uh the sir bar stuff works dot com. You
Speaker 1: can also type in sniff me off the case. See
Speaker 1: what happens. Man. I'm curious about that one I just
Speaker 1: made up. I'm gonna officially like, how do you claim that? Can?
Speaker 1: You can I copyright that somehow? Um? Yeah, just write
Speaker 1: it down on a letter and mail it to yourself,
Speaker 1: mail it to you. It's it's an iron clad legally alright.
Speaker 1: Um so I think I said iron clad, which means
Speaker 1: it's time for a message break and now it's listening
Speaker 1: to mail time. Great. I'm gonna call this grunge beef.
Speaker 1: Remember we talked a little bit about Sound Garden, sound
Speaker 1: Garden and Pearl Jam and all those bands and oh
Speaker 1: how they didn't like each other. Yeah, apparently someone's gotta
Speaker 1: beef with that Paul Hilt of Waukisha, Wisconsin. Guys, I'm
Speaker 1: a longtime fan and extremely important bone to pick regarding
Speaker 1: the Trees podcast, He's gonna sniff us off the case.
Speaker 1: I feel I need to let you know that the
Speaker 1: members of Pearl Jam and Sound Garden and their respective
Speaker 1: fans have always had a friendly relationship. You may recall
Speaker 1: that the short lived Temple of the Dog Remember Them Yeah,
Speaker 1: tribute band to late Andrew Wood, lead singer of Mother
Speaker 1: Love Bone, consisted of the members of Bolk Pearl Jam
Speaker 1: songs Eddie Vetter with Chris Cornell on vocals, although Eddie
Speaker 1: Better did sing in their most popular song, that one
Speaker 1: about Stephen Brett Yeah hunder strike Um. Chris Cornell was
Speaker 1: also briefly a roommate of one of the members of
Speaker 1: Pearl Jam in the pre crunge era of early nineties Seattle.
Speaker 1: I forget exactly which one at the moment. Additionally, Matt Cameron,
Speaker 1: the original drummer for Sound Garden, has been Pearl Jams
Speaker 1: drummer for the last fifteen years. I did this while
Speaker 1: I'm at it. Members of Alison Chains and Pearl Jam
Speaker 1: also collaborated in the so called supergroup Mike McCready p
Speaker 1: j's Pearl James guitarist and Lane Staley were both part
Speaker 1: of Mad Season Remember Them, which is recently released a
Speaker 1: deluxe remaster box set of their only studio album. Above,
Speaker 1: it was Nirvana and Pearl Jan that had the so
Speaker 1: called rivalry in the nineties. Josh. The rivalry mostly consisted
Speaker 1: on the part of the fans was inspired by many
Speaker 1: of Kurt Cobain's jabs at Pearl Jam for being a
Speaker 1: quote corporate rock band. Take that, Pearl Jam. Hopefully you'll
Speaker 1: excuse the grunge ERAa nerd um of this email. But
Speaker 1: this is a topic that it's very close to my
Speaker 1: rapidly fading youth, and it's Friday and I don't want
Speaker 1: to work. If you enjoy the history of this area,
Speaker 1: I highly recommend the Cameron Crow produced and directed documentary
Speaker 1: p J twenty for calling the twenty year history the pajamas.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, Pearl Jam. If the history doesn't interest you
Speaker 1: at all, there's still lots of good music I have
Speaker 1: been made gazing that. Thanks for all the great work,
Speaker 1: even if it prevents me from doing my own work.
Speaker 1: Paul hilt Uh while Kesha, Wisconsin, I think so Hey,
Speaker 1: thank you Paul Hilt. We appreciate the lesson. It's nice.
Speaker 1: We were just kidding, but thank you. I'm glad it's
Speaker 1: fawing this little history lesson. It was Nirvana. I forgot
Speaker 1: about Nirvana and Pearl Jam having a little, a little friction.
Speaker 1: Let me see how that ended. Yeah, Pearl Jam got
Speaker 1: a documentary made about their twenty years and Nirvanna went away.
Speaker 1: Nirvana went on becoming cold band forever. That's right. Uh,
Speaker 1: let's see if you want to give us a little
Speaker 1: history lesson. We love those things. They're awesome. Like seriously,
Speaker 1: please send us on. This isn't just me coming up
Speaker 1: with an easy sign off. Um, you can tweet to us.
Speaker 1: It would be a pretty short history lesson. But you
Speaker 1: can send us something to s y s K podcast.
Speaker 1: That's our Twitter handle. You can post on our Facebook page,
Speaker 1: which is Stuff you Should Know. You can send us
Speaker 1: an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com. You
Speaker 1: can hang out with us on our home on the web.
Speaker 1: Our website it's called Stuff you Should Know dot com
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
Speaker 1: it how Stuff works dot Com. Now that the show
Speaker 1: is over, don't forget to sign up for your free
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