Adverse Possession is better than leaving abandoned houses sit empty. I've lived in a neighborhood where most of the houses were abandoned. We started finding used needles and such in the gutters, junkies were using the places at night. We used to have to go roust them all the time because the next thing would be burglaries... I'd welcome Robinson over junkies any day.. quite often squatters start fires in the houses to keep warm and wind up burning them down, then you have a burned out mess sitting next door for who knows how long... Another good thing is that there is no sale of the property at some extremely low price on the record. That would mess up the evaluations of other properties nearby...
And maybe that's what they need. If the people living there couldn't actually afford the home maybe the home shouldn't be worth that much. If it was worth that much it would have attracted somebody who could have afforded the home.