He now owns several in the street he resides in because he was tired of them deteriorating & attracting groups of kids etc.He then did the 'rent to own' thing with several of his elderly parishoners & in fact maintains them with a landscaping crew etc.He finally admitted it will be a nice retirement income boost when the time comes.

That is assuming there are no major changes to make life in SD untenable like continued tax hikes or deterioration in services. 

Mismanagement and dysfunctional labor unions also contributed to the deterioration of CA public education system.  

Thousands of mental health patients including nursing home patients  with dementia are in facilities where they are isolated, a known risk for accelerated mental deterioration and likely accelerated death.

I've got to agree with @Shawn Q. that these neighbors are prime candidates for foreclosure: common-law hubby resistance, deteriorated house condition, inflated value expectations etc.

Unfortunately, the bank has had if for years and they've let it deteriorate to the point where it doesn't make sense to even make and offer.  

It's a seller's market and if you let the property deteriorate by not making any repairs it will eventually become uninhabitable.  

The loss is minuscule to me compared to the costs I have in SF, and I see it as temporary sadly, due to their advanced age and deteriorating condition (my grandfather actually just had an ER scare yesterday, but they got him stabilized thankfully).

Years ago I was doing a flip in Seattle and there was a house down the street that was boarded up but I could look through the boards and I saw old sheetrock, some deteriorating plywood and some scraps laying around some saw horses and a thick layer of dust.

Ie deteriorating roads, failing retaining walls, bad roofs.