Detroit faces a blight removal challenge in nearly every corner of the city. The city has lacked the courage to win the blight war through a systematic attack on derelict building owners. The solution is simple. Tighten building standards and make property owners personally liable for the cost of repairing their blighted buildings or demolishing them. If they refuse to pay, seize their assets. A civic task force made this recommendation about vacant and deteriorated buildings downtown near the end of the Young administration in the early 1990s. It was never followed. Unlike other major cities, Detroit places too much focus on the rights of property owners and too little on their responsibilities. Beginning in the 1970s with the federal Housing and Urban Development Department\'s low and moderate income housing debacle, abandoned and blighted buildings have ripped apart Detroit\'s solid neighborhood fabric, just as blighted buildings have crippled downtown and continue to slow its rebirth… The city\'s sympathy for blighted property owners ranges from the humanitarian to the laughable. Understandably, senior citizens and other low income homeowners have not been subjected to strict code enforcement, since they lack the funds to make repairs and have few, if any, other shelter options. Sadly, for many, a house in disrepair is the only home they have. There are no parallels between low-income residents attempting to keep some modicum of shelter over their heads and owners of downtown buildings or neighborhood speculators. No one is required to own a downtown building or vacant neighborhood house as a matter of survival. Those who elect to own property should be held accountable to their neighbors and the community for its condition. The excuses for maintaining blight must end before the city reaches a point of no return. The Kilpatrick administration must have the courage to aggressively enforce tightened property standards and owner responsibilities for Detroit \'s renewal to take hold. John E. Mogk is a professor of law at Wayne State University in Detroit .