Creative destruction

One side effect of the foreclosure crisis:  Many banks do not want to hold and pay taxes on run-down properties that no one will ever want to buy.  So they are razing the decrepit buildings that plague so many of our big cities and are donating the lots to new land banks.  These, in turn,  are making the land available for next to nothing for new development and neighborhood improvement projects.  (These include churches, which in some cases are getting land for expansion for pennies.) Thus we have an example of capitalism’s “creative destruction.”

See Banks turn to demolition of foreclosed properties to ease housing-market pressures – The Washington Post.