[Arran]

Hmm, makes me wonder what all is getting tossed out of the old houses that are being demolished as part of 'Move Ohio Backward erm Forward'. Seems they just smash and toss the whole house into the landfill without a thought to any sort of salvage here.

We lost a major piece of history in my town due to that program. Glad it's done! It is sad about these places. I have seen old homes that look pretty good being shoved down and just hauled off to the landfill around here. Seems there is little respect for history in our modern 'status symbol' society. A home now has to be custom built for the owner's needs and then thrown away a few years down the line for another. This is why I consider hobbies like ours to be so important!

It seems like such an odd inversion, but when it comes to property in most place in Canada the government has a hands off approach. They will not give any handouts to a property owner to tear down a building, sometimes they will issue threats if the place is burned out, to either rebuild it, tear it down, or that the city will do it for them and send them the bill, but in the end the cost is on the owner. The only time that one can get money for developing or renovating a property is if it is for low income housing, but there are strings attached. This isn't to say that some historic buildings have not been lost, but most seem to have involved real estate development scams.
 The same was true with regard to car buyback programs, someone with a mind figured out that in a "cash for clunkers style program" the majority of the trade ins would end up being cars that were within a year of hitting the wrecking yards anyhow. There was a similar one regionally aimed at getting people to trade in for more fuel efficient cars, but there were strings attached, like it had to be worth more then a certain amount, and no older then a certain age, basically like a $30,000 SUV. I know about that one because a friend of mine thought the Province was going to give him up to $4000 for his $400 beaters, then I read the fine print, I think it was a tax credit and none of his cars would have qualified since they were too old, or too worthless.
Regards
Arran