Abandoned Philadelphia homes boarded up by stimulus workers

Philadelphia hired temporary workers to eliminate backlog

The city of Philadelphia is using federal recovery money to clear a backlog of abandoned homes that needed to be boarded up.

The federal money was used to hire temporary workers to secure almost 2,300 hundred properties in Philadelphia. Bridget Collins is Deputy Commissioner of operations at the city’s Department of Licenses and Inspections. She says before the federal funding, hundreds of properties needed to be sealed dating back to 2006.

“They did the same thing that our regular permanent clean and seal employees do they go into the houses, they clean them out if there is debris and then they seal them up, so what we did when we got the recovery money was to put those temporary workers on that backlog and now we have no backlog.”

Collins says if people see an abandoned building they should call the city’s three-one-one non-emergency number to report it. She says crews are ready to attack any problem properties.