Investors in Dayton real estate are just cleaning up a mess

Re “One city official says trend is destroying neighborhoods,” June 6: The Dayton Daily News is slamming the wrong target. Investors did not cause Dayton neighborhoods to become distressed. Blaming them is grossly unfair and just wrong.

Investors are like the tow truck that shows up after the collision. They’re part of the effort to clean up the mess others caused. Who wants the highways strewn with smashed and abandoned vehicles?

Instead of admiration, the DDN wants us to ridicule their efforts. For their labors, they deserve to make a profit.

The most dishonest aspect of your article is how it absolves the residents of any blame. Didn’t the residents contribute to the deterioration of their neighborhoods by failing to pick up trash, maintain their homes and help the police fight crime?

No. Instead we are asked to believe that they became victims of forces they can’t control — evil California-based eBay and cruel out-of-state investors.

The DDN spin helps create the illusion that Dayton neighborhoods have needs that can only be fixed with yet more government rules and regulations.

Your article misses the big story: how government, on all levels, fails miserably to protect us from fraud. Anyone who pays the full retail price for a distressed house in a distressed neighborhood is a victim of fraud, whether they can admit it or not.

Prosecutors, courts and politicians — local, state and federal — turn a blind eye to this blatant thievery and allow the gangsters to carry on their criminal enterprises as usual. This is not the ordinary business of real estate, folks. This is the crime of deception and defrauding people.

Bill Semmett

Centerville