A tragedy in waiting?

It’s been abandoned for years – a residence in a drab Boston neighborhood boarded up and with all those problems accompanying abandonment for YEARS now.

I decided to call the city again about it. The response was that a building inspector would be sent out to see if the place was securely boarded up. As teenagers, we would have no trouble prying off a few boards thwarting our entrance in order to create a club house, which might then need a few candles to give us light instead of clandestinely bringing flashlights from home. In its vacant state today it might make a place for homeless people to stay.

And this house in question is next to an inhabited one, meaning that if a fire were to occur, tax-paying neighbors would be in danger, to say nothing of firefighters responding to an arson-caused or otherwise produced fire.

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It just seems that there has to be a better way for the city to deal with an abandoned house than merely ensure that it is properly boarded up year after year. Would this happen in Newton or Wellesley?