$1 Houses

This was a mess...literally. The story started out with us heading to the Rural/Metro building for a 9am presentation and Q & A between the potential buyers and the city officials.

At the meeting, Tim Carroll, the City of Syracuse Director of Operations, looked a little flustered with faced with a bigger than expected crowd and tougher questions. At one point, a member of the audience asked about preventing corruption in the selection of who will own the properties so the city officials did not just choose friends. Carroll responded by saying, "Whatever" as if he was still in middle school.

Also, I was distracted by Andrea Bullard, the reporter from NBC 3, and not because she's attractive. She was not even paying attention to the meeting. She did not have ner notebook out and she only wrote down one note. I did see her yawn, pick her fingernails and glare at me though. The pride of Plattasburgh State grad should probably step up her game because in my opinion, that wasn't really reporting.

When we finally got to see the houses, we were the first to arrive at 1105 W. Colvin. We had to sign a waiver to go in so we could not sue the city of Syracuse if we were to get injured, which was not very reassuring. Then, the man waiting from the city warned us that there might be racoons inside according to the neighbors. We cautiously crept through the door to find out the racoons were actually upstairs. What we did find was a disgusting house that I would not even want to buy for a dollar.

One potential buyer that we talked to but did not want to be on camera was on her 7th stop of the 11 houses and only had one yes on her paper as a potential purchase. She said that most of the houses were needed too many repairs for her to take the time and money and invest in them.

Besides that, the rest is in the story.