Thursday, June 23, 2011

Ballard promised to apply the Broken Windows Theory and clean up the appearance of blighted neighborhoods in Marion County. This includes promptly dealing with abandoned homes that breed crime in our neighborhoods. 2007 Greg Ballard’s 5 Point Plan to Fight Crime




FACT: Despite touting his “plan” for nearly four years, Mayor Ballard has not implemented programs to deal with abandoned homes in Marion County, failing to address issues in a timely manner, letting existing programs falter, and allowing crime and drugs to take hold of many of our neighborhoods.

  • Mayor Ballard has made no attempt to catalog abandoned homes in Indianapolis.  The inventory of abandoned houses on the Indy.gov website is from 2003, 5 years before Ballard took office.
  • In 2008, Ballard touted an abandoned housing program to take houses that failed to sell at the county tax sale and try to sell them from the City’s “Land Bank.”  Peterson started the “Land Bank” in 2006 and successfully lobbied the state legislature in 2006-2007 to reduce the number of tax sales at which a house must fail to sell before the county takes them from 2 tax sales to 1 tax sale.
  • Despite reports that there are well over 9,000 abandoned homes in the city, the “Land Bank” lists only 45 properties (0.005% of the city-wide totals) Indianapolis Star, June 20, 2011 
  • Ballard has had more financial resources to address the issue than any mayor in Indy history - at least $29 million - with no results to show for it.
  • Another broken promise from Mayor Ballard.