Massachusetts News 

Even in these boom times, abandoned housing troubles nearly every 
city and  town in Massachusetts. 

• Lawrence, profiled in the accompanying article, still suffers desperately from the early '90s recession, when abandoned housing became rampant, small owners "went under," and the city's nationally publicized problem with arson earned it the title "City of Fire." 

• Roxbury & Dorchester, where most of Boston's abandoned housing lies, are still on the thin edge between decay and prosperity. The current economic boom has stimulated recapture of some abandoned housing in Boston, yet many streets and blocks in Roxbury and Dorchester are still marked with abandoned houses. Boston officials maintain a listing of hundreds of abandoned properties. A walk of the streets in Dorchester found that every person encountered knew about tenants who report code violations just to live rent-free as long as they can before being evicted.

• New Bedford, known as an entry point for heavy drugs, is struggling to turn around its abandoned housing problem. One technique: repave the streets and install new street lighting to give troubled neighborhoods a new start.

• Brockton is also well known for its abandoned housing problem, the product of economic hard times and landlord-tenant laws that drive owners to "walk away" from their properties.

• Even small towns in Massachusetts have abandoned housing and "all the problems of the inner city," as housing inspectors in Greenfield, Montague, and Easthampton told the leaders of the Small Property Owners Association. The problem hits lower-income multi-family housing originally built for workers in old-time local factories. These small town inspectors also want a rent escrowing law, to stop the unchecked withholding of rent that drives small owners out of business.