NANTICOKE, Pa. -- Broken glass and furniture are scattered across the front lawns of two recently condemned homes along West Washington Street.
Nanticoke officials say they are sending a message that blight will not be tolerated.
"People need to learn to clean their act up and take care of their properties instead of letting them go to hell," said Jonah Hartman of Nanticoke. "That's exactly what they're doing. They are letting it go to hell and it's making the city look bad."
A building along East Main Street in Nanticoke has also been condemned. City officials say that the roof is caving in and it is not structurally sound.
"It needs to be torn down and something new put there. Maybe even a new business" said Scott Tarnowski.
"It looks like a dump," said Vanessa Rickey.
"We have a lot of them in our city, the blight, there's a lot of them here. So we're just taking one step at a time along with our code enforcement officer and our police" said Nanticoke Mayor Kevin Coughlin.
The city has plans to condemn ten total properties but it's going to be a process. Officials say many times vacant homes are owned by people who do not live in the area anymore and stopped caring for the property.
Out of towners are buying and they don't come back to fix them up. That's our biggest problem right now" said Jack Minsavage, Nanticoke Code Enforcement.
"I think the city is doing a lot to try to improve the way the area looks to bring in hopefully more businesses and bring the city back," said Rickey.
While city officials hope their actions will send a message to other property owners to clean up, if more buildings need to be demolished, the city is working on acquiring grant money to do so.