[Arran]

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.

That wouldn't work if the place is in an abandoned or zero value area, like an inner city.  The owner would just let the city take it over, by not paying the property tax.  This happened in New York City's South Bronx area, even without the above requirement.

If I am not mistaken a lot of what happened in the South Bronx area was motivated by fire insurance fraud, mostly on "rent controlled" buildings. That was an example of a good intentions having a bad outcome, capping rents at a certain level sounds like a nice idea, but if the costs of maintaining the property increase something has to give. It also has the unfortunate consequence of making the property worth less, I can imagine the problems that would ensue with trying to get a loan to renovate, or trying to sell such a building. Here the threat works because the land is often worth more then the building, there is a form of rent control on residential property, but it's more related to rate of increase rather then picking a rate and freezing it.
Regards
Arran