During the Great Depression, when banks foreclosed on farms, neighbors often showed up at the auctions together.
They’d bid only a few cents, and return the land to the family that lost it. Sometimes a noose hung nearby as a warning to outsiders not to profit from someone else’s ruin.
It was rough, but it worked, communities protected each other when the system wouldn’t.
If a collapse like that happened today, do you think people would still stand together or has that kind of solidarity disappeared? Could it happen again?
I don’t see that working today.
If it is a house, get good insurance on it that will pay out on the cost of the structure. If they demolish the house, keep the land undeveloped and invest the insurance payout rather than rebuild. Taxes will be low because the land will have dropped in price thanks to the local community. Continue as the town has to raise taxes because they are destroying rateable properties and insurance rates rise due to the increased likelihood of property damage. Hope for either pushing the locals out or getting a municipal bankruptcy to put the town under state control.