Urban renewal

[cntrydncr1]

If there are homes boarded up for urban renewal, are they fair game...public property?

 

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[mlhudson]

start with your local building department they can tell weather it's up for demo or if
it's for sale or has a permit issued for construction, just ask one of the nabors around
any thing is possible.
best of luck in your research

m l hudson

 

[Tom_in_CA]

A friend of mine owns a demolition company. They routinely get all the contracts for urban demolition in our area. He lets me detect any of his sites with a "wink wink". He is into bottle digging himself, so he sort of fancies seeing what I might find in his old-town sites.

I asked him once what he does when some stranger comes up and asks to bottle dig or metal detect his old-town demo. sites. He thought about it, and said "I'd tell them no". Because the minute he says "yes", he is responsible for them (if they left dangerous holes, etc...). Or maybe he'd like to say "yes", but he's accountable to the person that hired him, etc... So the easy answer is "no". But he routinely hunts his own sites after his own crews cut out at 5pm. Quite often he works side by side with persons md'ing and bottle digging, and actually enjoys the company. But if they were to "ask him permission", he'd have to say no. It's wierd how that works.

Personally, especially for public domain demolition sites, I always just help myself. The era of fences, ribbons, cones, etc... all started about 30 yrs. ago during the age of litigation (ie.: you slip on a bananna peel and can sue the const. company). I remember in the late 1970s, they tore out all the sidewalks in our old-town district, and seateds were being found by the dozen! There were no fences, cones, ribbons, nothing! But NOW, if the same thing were to occur, there'd be "sidewalk closed" signs, ribbons, etc... Of course, we just step over them after 5pm and go to it. Naturally, if you ask enough questions, and get in the way of the tractors, of course you'll be un-invited. So it's all just a matter of discretion. It's also a question of how you appear. If you look like you know what you're doing, people just assume you're ok. If you look like you're dodging attention, people wonder "just what is that guy doing?"

A similar question was asked about foreclosed homes. The psychology is the same, but that deals with bank (ie.: "private" albeit mega-co's) owned homes vs your question of "urban renewal" (ie.: eminent domain public owned), is the way I read your question.