Michael Marrero Quotations

The purpose of the program is to remove vacant and abandoned structures. In all of these cases, the abandoned houses are usually fire hazards, where drugs are dealt or are a harbor for juveniles.

It is funded by a grant by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

I think the guys have fun most of the time they are destroying a building. A lot of the houses are built in a certain fashion where it doesn't take too much to bring it down.

We hope that at some point, either the housing department will build new homes or that a private person will buy the land to build a new house.

What has to happen in order for a house to be brought down are a lot of legal things. We have to provide a notice to the owners and that takes X number of days.

There are a few ways that we find out about vacant houses that need to be torn down. Either neighbors call about the vacant houses or our staff find the houses.

Some people think that it's a fast process and some probably think that it's not fast enough.

For a major hotel, like we did a couple of years ago, it's different because of the scale and size of the building. We have an outside contractor do a building the size of a hotel. The demolition was bigger then the city could handle.

There's a large segment of the population that doesn't know what's allowed and what isn't.