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While America have a big problem in public and private infrastructure, I've been wondering in my head about the problem even at small scale in cities and villag

While America have a big problem in public and private infrastructure, I've been wondering in my head about the problem even at small scale in cities and village here in France. We have a ton of old buildings, privately owned. Mine included, where it's a small building of 4 floors and 4 owners. One appartement per floor. It's so hard to get people into investing money without any monetary return. We fix problems after they happen. We waited for the rain pipe to break to fix it, we waited for the balcony to leak in order to fix it etc.. In Marseille two buildings collapsed right in the center of city. They were decrepit and owned by a company who never invested a dim despite problem reported. People actually died. I wonder how many time it need to happen until we wake up? I'm managing my coproperty, and it's so hard to even find what kind of local/governmental help we can get. We would be very happy to redo insulation and building beams if it was possible to co-finance it which public/city money. But instead the norm seems to let 150 years old building (built with good materials) getting destroyed and build new cheap reinforced concrete one. Is it really cheaper to pop ton of buildings which will not even last 50 years? What is there no incentive to help privately owned building maintenance?

abraae 8y ago
> We would be very happy to redo insulation and building beams if it was possible to co-finance it which public/city money. Hey, I'd be happy to accept public money to fix my own house as well. But frankly, I bought it cheaper since it had those problems so I don't see how that would be fair to my fellow taxpayers.
- dimillian 8y ago
  Ha, I have no idea on how to make that happen. But what will happen is that the city will slap a motion on the door of the building in the coming years, and we'll be forced to sell for as cheap as possible to city directly or some cheap promotor. Which is kinda lame because giving 250K would be cheaper than buying 1M worth of land to demolish a building and build a 3M building on top of it.
dsajames 8y ago
Why wouldn't you be financially responsible for your own property? This doesn't make sense.
- dimillian 8y ago
  Because it's not that easy. I don't have 20K (or more) on hand to fix a building which went trough 150 years of life and lack of maintenance.
  - justin66 8y ago
    So why shouldn't you borrow the money or sell the property to someone who can properly take care of it?
    - dimillian 8y ago
      This is what I'll do actually. I have no choice, and I'll do it ASAP in order to not loose too much money as the building state is devaluating as time passes.
magduf 8y ago
>We have a ton of old buildings, privately owned. Mine included, where it's a small building of 4 floors and 4 owners. One appartement per floor. It's so hard to get people into investing money without any monetary return. This is what you get when you have a single building with multiple owners. Can you imagine having a car that's owned by 4 people? It wouldn't get maintained either. This is why in the US, condos (buildings with separately-owned units) are run by management companies who have the authority to do maintenance and repairs and to charge the owners for this if it's more than their monthly condo fee. Of course, this isn't immune to problems (mgmt companies are frequently accused of mismanagement), but it sounds like you don't have anything like that in place, just multiple people owning pieces of the same building, with no central governance. That can never work out. >In Marseille two buildings collapsed right in the center of city. They were decrepit and owned by a company who never invested a dim despite problem reported. People actually died. >I wonder how many time it need to happen until we wake up? This sounds like a clear case of negligence. Here, generally there'd be a big lawsuit against the management company, and possibly investigation of criminal negligence since someone died. Criminal negligence is a crime, not a tort, and can result in the management going to prison.

abraae 8y ago

> We would be very happy to redo insulation and building beams if it was possible to co-finance it which public/city money. Hey, I'd be happy to accept public money to fix my own house as well. But frankly, I bought it cheaper since it had those problems so I don't see how that would be fair to my fellow taxpayers.

dimillian 8y ago
Ha, I have no idea on how to make that happen. But what will happen is that the city will slap a motion on the door of the building in the coming years, and we'll be forced to sell for as cheap as possible to city directly or some cheap promotor. Which is kinda lame because giving 250K would be cheaper than buying 1M worth of land to demolish a building and build a 3M building on top of it.

dsajames 8y ago

Why wouldn't you be financially responsible for your own property? This doesn't make sense.

dimillian 8y ago
Because it's not that easy. I don't have 20K (or more) on hand to fix a building which went trough 150 years of life and lack of maintenance.
- justin66 8y ago
  So why shouldn't you borrow the money or sell the property to someone who can properly take care of it?
  - dimillian 8y ago
    This is what I'll do actually. I have no choice, and I'll do it ASAP in order to not loose too much money as the building state is devaluating as time passes.

magduf 8y ago

>We have a ton of old buildings, privately owned. Mine included, where it's a small building of 4 floors and 4 owners. One appartement per floor. It's so hard to get people into investing money without any monetary return. This is what you get when you have a single building with multiple owners. Can you imagine having a car that's owned by 4 people? It wouldn't get maintained either. This is why in the US, condos (buildings with separately-owned units) are run by management companies who have the authority to do maintenance and repairs and to charge the owners for this if it's more than their monthly condo fee. Of course, this isn't immune to problems (mgmt companies are frequently accused of mismanagement), but it sounds like you don't have anything like that in place, just multiple people owning pieces of the same building, with no central governance. That can never work out. >In Marseille two buildings collapsed right in the center of city. They were decrepit and owned by a company who never invested a dim despite problem reported. People actually died. >I wonder how many time it need to happen until we wake up? This sounds like a clear case of negligence. Here, generally there'd be a big lawsuit against the management company, and possibly investigation of criminal negligence since someone died. Criminal negligence is a crime, not a tort, and can result in the management going to prison.