BluegrassForeclosure.com

The flow of properties was effectively cut off eight years ago when former Mayor Jerry Abramson said his administration dissolved the department’s unit in charge of seizing properties — in part, because of the costs of seizing properties and a glut of parcels already on the city books.

“We reached a point where we were — for lack of a better term — overrun with ownership of vacant lots that we were unable to recycle,” said Abramson, who pushed for the land bank’s creation in the late 1980s.

Metro government hasn’t brought a foreclosure case to the auction floor since 2006, according to a Courier-Journal review of records from the Jefferson Circuit Court Master Commissioner’s office.

Bill Patteson, spokesman for the County Attorney Mike O’Connell, said foreclosing proved to bring in only properties with “little or no return to the public coffer.”

But the increase in vacant properties has brought calls from housing advocates and neighborhood groups to rethink the land bank’s role, possibly allowing it to take in and churn out greater numbers of lots.  Courier-Journal.com.