St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman took to Twitter on Wednesday to express his pride over a drop in the city's number of vacant homes.
According to Kriseman, there were 899 vacant and boarded houses in 2013 and now there are 406.
As of April 1, 2016, this is the full list of vacant properties according to the city.
The city has been doing a number of programs and has offered incentives to attract buyers and nonprofits to rehab homes. The city still has work in south St. Petersburg in the neighborhoods of Childs Park and Midtown neighborhoods.
For Jabaar Edmonds, vice president of the Childs Park Neighborhood Association, the vacant properties become an eyesore.
"When people are not from the community and they see vacant lot, vacant lot, abandoned house, abandoned house, they feel a certain kind of way about it," he said.
The city has also invested in more code enforcement officers to go around the city and find violations at these vacant properties. If the homes are not up to the code, the listed property owner can face fines.
Another issue for the city is not many people are reporting issues in certain neighborhoods, which makes it hard to find where all the properties are that need immediate attention.
