SOUTH BEND -- Barry Koehler has lived one house away from the home in the 700 block of North Sherman Street, between Lincoln Way West and Portage Avenue, since 1965.
Up until a few years ago, he says, the one-story, three-bedroom bungalow belonged to an elderly couple.
But the couple died in 2011, he says, and the 108-year old structure soon fell into disrepair.
Today, it sits rotting in the middle of the block, the foundation crumbling and a portion of the roof collapsed.
As for the detached garage, a strong wind could knock it down.
Koehler's opinion? It needs to come down -- all of it.
"That's the only way it's going to get corrected," he says from the front porch of his own home, one of a handful on the block not vacant or abandoned. "Ain't nobody around" to take care of it.
And even if there was, it wouldn't be worth the investment, Phil Badger, Koehler's neighbor, says.
"You can't put money into it," Badger says of the house. He's sitting at a desk in his dining room, the abandoned structure visible across the street through the front window. "It isn't economically feasible to fix it up."
The city agrees. It has placed the house, which has been abandoned now for about a year, on a list of 50 targeted for immediate demolition as part of an effort to address 1,000 vacant and abandoned structures in 1,000 days.
Mayor Pete Buttigieg launched the effort 11 days ago, in concert with the release of a long-awaited report on the vacant and abandoned housing problem in the city.