INDIANAPOLIS - As of Friday morning, the Indianapolis Water Company is officially sold. Selling the utility to Citizens Energy gives the city about $340 million it didn't have before.
Much of the money is going to Mayor Greg Ballard's Rebuild Indy initiative which includes roads, sidewalks and bridges. Much of that rebuilding effort involves tearing down 2,000 abandoned homes.
Saturday, the day after the water company sale is final, wrecking crews will demolish seven homes. In the next 16 months, the city wants to remove 2,000 abandoned homes.
That is more than it's removed in the last three and a half years combined. Abandoned, unsightly, unhealthy abandoned homes are considered one of the biggest scourges of inner city neighborhoods.
They are havens for vagrants, drug dealing, prostitution and other crimes. They drive down property values and the quality of life. City officials will begin tearing down what they call the worst of the worst, homes that are causing neighbors the most problems.
Reginald Walton Department of Metropolitan Development explained, "They have become infamous for suspicious activity. The homes that have calls for loitering, prostitution, drug activity, suspicious activity those addresses that have several police runs."
Walton says they are homes that for years have been boarded up, broken into and boarded up again.
The city figures there are between 9,000 and 10,000 such homes. This tear-down effort will take down only about a third of them.
