The City of Albany is need of an overhaul that attacks the worst impoverished neighborhoods and replaces them with desirable housing and people. The poor do not need slum housing that is affordable to rent. The poor need to be given an opportunity to obtain education, an opportunity for good paying work, and quality housing. Subsiding housing or keeping it artificially cheap does not encourage responsible ownership, instead it only encourages poor people to stick around and cause crime.

With the recent shooting deaths in Albany, there is compelling evidence that Albany needs to eliminate blighted neighborhoods and replace them with something more desirable as a society. Pockets of hopeless, violence, and vice only drag down a city, and reinforce stereotypes of hatred. The most troubled neighborhoods of Albany are not only a drag on government for the cost of providing services, they do not adequately provide revenue back to the city.

There needs to be a change – a big change. Albany must be serious about eliminating it's most troublesome neighborhoods and replacing them with more desirable properties. Since the Kelo v. City of New London case, municipalities have clearly had the power to condemn properties not just for specific public purposes, but also to improve the quality of a city by bringing in desirable private uses of the land.

The much troubled neighborhoods of Arbor Hill and the South End have endless possibilities should the city choose to condemn the lands and replace them with more desirable uses. There are hundreds of acres in both of those neighborhoods, that could the government take control of could be sold as large parcels to be used as shopping centers, office parks, mixed used neighborhoods, or even luxury housing.

Any use but slum living in Arbor Hill and the South End would bring in more revenue and cost less to provide services. The problem is the enormous upfront cost to initially gentrify the city, and the opposition by the neighborhoods selected for demolition. Still, with increasing gas prices, it seems likely that things will change in these neighborhoods. There will be a desire for quality urban housing, and the poor will be displaced. Governments will be compelled to rid neighborhoods of crime, and push out the squalor that inhabits them.