Update: I went back in November of 2018 to see how things were doing; I also revisited the area in late summer of 2019.

Eleven years now I’ve been photographing JeffVanderLou, particularly east of Grand Boulevard, and perhaps what is most striking is how little has changed, and if anything has changed, it is always for the worse.

It still baffles me how long some of the brick rustled houses, some of them stripped of their walls getting close on a decade now, can still sit in giant piles of matchsticks after all of this time.

Then this building is probably the only one I’ve seen fixed up after sitting vacant after its construction.

But this church has sat like this forever! It has not been cleaned up all in years since the first time I photographed it. There is no accountability at all. Here is the church in 2011, before its front facade was destroyed, and then after in 2014 and 2016,

And then there are these beautiful homes, right across Glasgow, which are in excellent condition, but would you want to risk investing in them? I’m starting to worry now, looking at the one below, and wonder if it is still occupied.

Update: The house on the far right below was demolished in the summer of 2020. The rest were gone by the summer of 2021.

How long can these sad houses sit like this? I remember when people still lived in them. Here is this block in 2011, part 1 and part 2, in 2013 and in 2016.