http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6RQEC00dsM'Alliance the Jungle Part 1 - Abandoned Houses Everywhere'  is a video of abandoned houses in Alliance, Ohio recorded on October 1, 2008.  In the six block diameter location where this video was recorded, there are about 600 homes and about 170 of those homes are unused, abandoned, or condemned. 
The video also features some of the children of Alliance, traveling on bicycle, and it is accompanied by the song 'The Message' recorded by Melle Mel (Melvin Glover) and Duke Bootee and released by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five in 1982.
This is my neighborhood.  About 25% of the homes here are unused.  This is the worst part of town; there are more condemned and abandoned houses throughout the city, but the highest concentration is here. 
I spent the month of September on reconnaissance, identifying which houses appeared to have life in them and which ones did not, paying close attention to the worst buildings. Of course I did not record anything about the people themselves, although I did meet a few nice people along the way who were interested in what I was doing.
You may notice there are two stores in the video.  There are about five more empty, boarded up stores in the same vicinity.  Of course that is not even mentioning downtown, which is mostly boarded up businesses too.  Wikipedia mentions that the town is known as 'the town where Main Street is a dead-end,' and it's true, it ends at a railroad station that is barely used for public transportation.
Sometimes living here makes me feel like I am living in a refugee camp, or a concentration camp.
This video is intended to be the first of a series relating the empty and abandoned homes to the mortgage crisis of recent years and the unethical bailout of Wall Street by the corrupt two party dictatorship of the United States.
Maybe what we need is a huge public works project renewing the railroads in the US, to modernize our railroads like the ones in Japan and bring our cities closer together with public transportation.
It is my hope that the series will have a happy ending.  Already since the end of September, six condemned houses in this area have been torn down, including one you see in this video.
Screen capture of the last frame of the video:
Here is an up close picture of that graffiti on the store that says 'Say No to Industry':
And here is my working map of the neighborhood, up to date as of Friday. (Note: I did not record anything about the people living here, I just noted which houses were used and which were unused.)
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