more demolitions?

Cuyahoga County has been in the news recently because of their demolitions: 1000 last year and looking to demolish 20,000 if they can get the funding, according to news reports. 
Hard hit communities all over the country are facing similar challenges, although the lawless stripping and looting of foreclosed properties seems to be much more out of control in Cleveland than in most other cities.  Given that houses are systematically rendered worthless there as soon as they go vacant, it's easy to understand the need to demolish them at that point.  But I'm questioning how or why the demolition after the fact is touted as fighting blight, instead of what it really is...cleaning up after a failure all down the line. 
Here in Mansfield, where the looters and strippers are a little more subdued, and where perhaps the neighborhood vigilance has not eroded so badly, we should have a chance to apply some real solutions short of the wrecking ball.  We should resist the urge to look to Cleveland as a model for fighting blight.  Blight has already won the battle there.  We still have a fighting chance here.

What I'm suggesting is that more attention and funding be put into securing vacant properties.  That we learn how to live with and manage them.  And that we invest in positive approaches to preventing deterioration.  The money we are going to spend tearing houses down might be better spent and might create a few jobs if we apply it to code enforcement, winterization, secure boardups, lawn mowing, and maintenance.  Even where the community has to step in and put some money into a property to save it, it makes more sense than waiting for demolition.  The cost goes on the tax bill either way.  The demolition compounds the cost and loss by destroying a certain amount of real estate value and creating a non-contributing empty lot to the landscape. 
I'm forseeing a mounting frustration with vacant properties that is building, and because we've been lazy in applying preventive maintenance, a growing consensus that demolition is the answer.  I'm not even speaking as a "perservationist" in opposing that, rather from the conviction that it has no significant effect on battling blight.  It's the last act of the defeated...clearing the dead and dying from the battlefield and little else.