Wistful Abandonment

There are a lot of abandoned farmhouses in Iowa.
Ever since I was a kid, seeing the ghostly remains of a house would sadden me. Not just your average - gee, isn't that too bad - kind of sad, but a visceral mourning for what once was and is no more. Sometimes I'd see just an empty lot rimmed with day lilies in the middle of a soybean field; the only monument left to mark where a family once lived and worked and played. Were they happy? When did they leave the farm? How many children played in that yard?
Now I live in a city, albeit it a small one, in a run-down neighborhood where most houses are rental properties and almost all suffer from years of neglect. My house was built in 1914; a foursquare in what was then undoubtedly an upscale suburb. We have put more than $40,000 into this old house, with tens of thousands more needed to repair and replace, remodel and resurface. My house deserves every penny we have put into it. It has original stained glass windows, gorgeous floors (those that we've been able to refinish so far), woodwork that would be prohibitively expensive to make today, and grand pillars inside and outside.
But there is a street in my neighborhood that is deteriorating rapidly. One house has nearly been torn apart just within the last year. It seems that as soon as a rental property is left vacant, it is vandalized. The first to go are the windows, then even the aluminum siding is stripped off to sell.
I certainly don't understand the vandalism or what kind of life experience leads someone to enjoy destroying.
But what bothers me even more is that the city allows landlords to simply abandon properties; at least it seems as if they have been abandoned.
Des Moines, as do most cities nationwide, has a growing population of homeless people. The current mortgage crisis will turn more families than ever out into the street. The waiting lists for low-income rental housing are prohibitively long. Yet Des Moines allows empty houses to be desecrated beyond repair. Why are property owners allowed to leave an empty house to simply disintegrate? Why isn't there a program to condemn these properties before they are severely damaged, sell them at auction for renovation or take them over and contract out the renovation?
Every time I walk past these houses, I am overwhelmed with sadness. Maybe someday someone in power will recognize the value of using and repairing what we already have.
Maybe someday, these once proud houses, where families lived, some happily and, undoubtedly, some not, will again be called "home."