Coming home
Not just Gary: Vacant houses plague some Chicago neighborhoods, too
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After suspected serial killer Darren Vann led police in Gary, Ind., to the bodies of six women that had been hidden in vacant houses, many journalists called attention to the problem of urban blight, which has hit Gary particularly hard. City officials estimate that there are 8,000 vacant houses in Gary, about one out of every five houses in the city sitting empty. Ten Chicago neighborhoods have vacancy rates higher than Gary’s. In Riverdale, home of the dilapidated Altgeld Gardens and Phillip Murray housing projects and many abandoned factories and warehouses, 45 percent of houses are vacant, according to the 2010 Census. Six other neighborhoods in Chicago have vacancy rates at or above 25 percent: Fuller Park, Washington Park, Woodlawn and Englewood on the South Side, and North Lawndale and East Garfield Park on the West Side.