A neglected building rarely harms only the person who owns it.

The damage spreads.

The neighboring homeowner watches the value of a well-maintained property suffer. A nearby business loses foot traffic. People begin avoiding the block. Visitors see the building through the windshield and quietly revise their opinion of the entire community.

Eventually, everyone pays for the neglect except, in many cases, the owner responsible for it.

Ireland is preparing to challenge that arrangement.

According to a June 2026 report from Ireland’s Classic Hits Radio, the Irish government plans to introduce a Derelict Property Tax across 107 of the country’s larger towns and cities. The proposal would replace an existing levy and maintain a minimum annual rate of 7% of a derelict property’s market value, with the possibility of an even higher rate. It would also strengthen enforcement and pursue unpaid charges more aggressively. 

The most important part of the proposal is not the percentage.

It is the purpose.

Irish officials have said the objective is not to generate more government revenue. Success would be measured by the number of neglected properties restored and homes returned to productive use. The tax is designed to change the financial calculation facing an owner who finds it easier to leave a building abandoned than to repair, sell or redevelop it. 

That is the part local cities in America should study.

The exact Irish tax may not fit every state’s laws or every community’s circumstances. But its underlying philosophy travels well:

Doing nothing should not remain the easiest and most profitable option.

Neglect Has Become a Business Strategy

People sometimes assume every neglected property is the result of hardship.

Certainly, some are.

A family may be dealing with an estate dispute. Financing may collapse halfway through a project. An elderly owner may lack the ability to maintain a building. A property may be tied up in litigation, foreclosure or complicated ownership.

Cities should recognize those realities and create reasonable ways to help cooperative owners.

But that is not the full story.

Some owners are simply waiting.

They leave a building empty while the surrounding community improves. Other property owners maintain their buildings. Local businesses take risks. Taxpayers fund infrastructure, landscaping, policing and public improvements. Eventually, the value of the neglected land rises because of investments made by everyone except its owner.

The owner keeps the potential upside.

The neighborhood absorbs the damage in the meantime.

That is not patience. It is the transfer of private costs onto the public.

Local governments have spent decades treating this type of abandonment as though it were an unfortunate visual inconvenience. It should be treated as a direct threat to economic development.

Start With a Real Inventory

Most cities already know where their worst properties are.

Residents know.

Code officers know.

Nearby business owners definitely know.

Still, many communities lack a clear, verified and publicly understandable inventory of long-term vacant and derelict properties.

That should be the first step.

A useful registry would distinguish among several very different situations:

• A building that recently became vacant
• A property under active renovation
• A site delayed by a legitimate legal or ownership problem
• A structure that is unsafe or deteriorating
• A property that has remained neglected for many years without meaningful progress

Those categories matter.

A family dealing with probate should not be treated like a speculative owner who has allowed a commercial property to decay for 15 years. Good policy needs enough flexibility to recognize the difference.

But flexibility should not become another excuse for permanent inaction.

Once a property meets a clearly established definition of long-term neglect, the city should document how long it has remained unresolved, what violations exist, who owns it and what steps have been taken.

The public deserves to know which properties are damaging its neighborhoods and why they remain untouched.

Replace Endless Warnings With Firm Timelines

Many cities have no shortage of notices, hearings, extensions and compliance plans.

What they often lack is an ending.

A property can move through the same administrative cycle for years. New deadlines replace old deadlines. Ownership changes hands. Another attorney appears. Another plan is promised.

Nothing happens.

Cities need clear escalation schedules.

The longer a qualifying property remains neglected, the less comfortable the status quo should become. Existing code-enforcement tools, liens, nuisance-abatement procedures and other lawful remedies should be applied consistently rather than sporadically.

The goal is not punishment for its own sake.

The goal is to make action more attractive than continued abandonment.

That is what makes the Irish proposal so interesting. It recognizes that a weak and inconsistently collected penalty may simply become another manageable cost of holding neglected property. A consequence only changes behavior when it is meaningful enough to affect the owner’s decision. Ireland’s proposed system is intended to strengthen that pressure and bring properties back into use. (Ireland\’s Classic Hits Radio⁠)

Pair Pressure With a Way Out

Enforcement alone will not solve every property.

Some owners genuinely want to rehabilitate a building but face financing, permitting or technical obstacles. Others may be willing to sell but do not know how to navigate redevelopment. A city that demands action should also make productive action easier.

That could include:

• Expedited permitting for qualifying rehabilitation projects
• Help identifying available grants, loans or tax incentives
• Facade or structural-improvement programs
• Assistance connecting owners with qualified developers
• Temporary flexibility where a credible redevelopment plan exists
• Help resolving title, probate or ownership complications
• Acquisition or disposition strategies when voluntary rehabilitation fails

This creates a reasonable bargain.

The city will help an owner who is sincerely trying to return a property to use.

It will stop endlessly accommodating an owner who is not.

That distinction is important because the objective should never be to build a profitable collection system around failure. The objective is to eliminate the conditions that produced the charge in the first place.

Put the Worst Properties First

Local government often gravitates toward the easiest cases.

A cooperative homeowner with an overgrown yard may receive immediate attention because that case is simple. Meanwhile, a large abandoned commercial property continues damaging an entire corridor because the ownership is complicated and the legal process may be difficult.

That is administratively understandable.

It is also strategically backward.

Every city should identify the small number of properties causing the greatest harm and organize its response around them.

Which building is suppressing nearby investment?

Which empty site makes an otherwise improving corridor feel unsafe?

Which neglected structure is the first thing visitors see when entering downtown?

Which property has frustrated residents for so long that it has become a symbol of governmental helplessness?

Those are not merely code-enforcement cases.

They are economic-development priorities.

Returning one major abandoned property to use could create housing, office space, restaurants, jobs, tax revenue and new confidence in the surrounding neighborhood.

That may produce more value than another branding campaign announcing that the city is open for business.

Measure Buildings Returned to Use

Government programs tend to measure what is easiest to count.

Notices issued.

Inspections completed.

Fines assessed.

Liens recorded.

Meetings held.

Those numbers describe activity. They do not necessarily describe progress.

Ireland’s proposed approach offers a better standard. Its success is supposed to be judged by the number of properties restored and homes brought back into use, rather than by the amount of tax collected. 

Local cities should adopt the same mindset.

The meaningful questions are:

How many long-neglected buildings were repaired?

How many became occupied?

How many were sold to owners prepared to improve them?

How many new homes or businesses were created?

How much private investment followed?

Did conditions on the surrounding block improve?

A city collecting millions in fines while the same abandoned buildings remain untouched has not solved the problem. It has monetized it.

Property Rights Come With Consequences

The predictable objection is that owners have rights.

They do.

Property ownership should carry meaningful protections.

But ownership also creates consequences for other people. A severely neglected property can damage neighboring values, discourage investment, attract illegal activity and alter how residents feel about their community.

The right to benefit from property should not become an unlimited right to make everyone around it poorer.

That principle does not require cities to become hostile to property owners. In fact, a clear, fair and consistently administered system is better for responsible owners than the arbitrary enforcement many communities use today.

Responsible owners should know that their investment will not be undermined indefinitely by someone who refuses to maintain the property next door.

Stop Accepting Permanent Abandonment

Ireland estimates that it has 19,438 derelict residential properties. Its proposed tax is an acknowledgment that the old system has not created enough urgency to return them to use.

American cities should pay attention.

We do not need to copy every detail of Ireland’s policy. Local and state laws differ, and any new approach must be designed carefully.

But the central question is universal:

Why should neglect remain cheaper than responsibility?

Cities already spend enormous amounts trying to attract residents, employers, developers and visitors. Yet many tolerate highly visible abandoned properties that undermine those same efforts every day.

Before launching another campaign about the future, perhaps communities should deal with the buildings visibly trapped in the past.

Create the inventory.

Set the deadline.

Offer help to owners willing to act.

Apply meaningful pressure to those who are not.

Measure success by properties restored, not penalties collected.

Abandonment should not be allowed to become a permanent business model.

And a community should not have to keep paying for an owner’s decision to do nothing.