My home town is going to shit, in part because developers/franchises buy up land along our major artery, have their businesses fail (typically due to poor service) and let the abandoned buildings sit empty, forming a line of commercial rot right down the middle of town.
I'm looking to take local political action to force these effective squatters from sitting on lots that are rotting away. I don't want to deprive them of the property necessarily, but I do think the city should require commercial lots be maintained if they're going to be disused.
So far the two largest eyesores are owned by real estate developers that want absurd money for the land, both places having died in 2010. Notably one of the properties was a huge buffet that they property owners never did maintenance on when it shut down. Now it's rotting away and would likely require a complete demolition along with the parking lot being completely recycled and repaved, but the real estate developers haven't come down from their two million dollar asking price ever since the first day the business closed.
To light a fire under their asses to either sell the property or start having to spend their money on upkeep, I was considering drafting a compounding monthly percentage fee on the property tax for abandoned and untended commercial locations. This would start at a 0.5% surcharge for any property that's cited as such with a six month window of action to do cleanup, after which point the property tax is increased by 4% of assessed value per month.
This would at least in my naive opinion discourage real estate development squatting.