While residents absorb that prospect, they have tried to prod the city into doing something about conditions they believe generate crime in their neighborhood. Abandoned house, vacant lot, someone lives there, vacant lot, vacant lot, someone lives there, abandoned house. Now public officials have finally gotten the message that residents' complaints are more than about tidiness but are at the root of some serious problems. A Neighborhood of Contrasts Greater Roseland, about 12 miles south of the city's gleaming skyscrapers, is a neighborhood of stark contrasts. Families raise their children in well-kept homes across the street from suspected drug houses.
New housing is just down the road from where prostitutes walk the streets.
Chicago Building Commissioner Mary Richardson-Lowry estimates that 90 percent of the owners of the abandoned buildings live outside the area. The city in April passed a measure that requires owners to register vacant structures and obtain liability insurance, or face fines. Owners are encouraged to rehabilitate but the city will pursue demolition in court if deemed necessary, Richardson-Lowry said. Still, the city is relatively powerless if an owner boards up a building and is in no other way delinquent, she said. That in and of itself is not unusual.