Where are your friends from, concorde?
Not to be rude or anything, but your friends have some high expectations of home owners if they are put off by the lack of professional landscaping or updates to mid-century houses. Not everybody wants or cares for the sorts of luxuries or needs to put on a display of opulence that some individuals in certain communities can't do without.
This isn't Beverly Hills or a gated community in some distant suburb of Phoenix. It's a city with a mix of housing, and for anyone who's traveled even across North America, Victoria as a region represents one of the nicest collections of housing stock on the continent.
But to each his own, I suppose.
His silence is interesting. For all we know, there never were any "friends", maybe concorde was stating his own opinion but just didn't want to take responsibility for it. I mean, I wouldn't really want to take responsibility for such a stupid idea.
While i'm certain mental illness is a factor in some of these dilapidated properties, i'm equally certain that some of these properties aren't maintained because some kids are simply estranged from their elderly parents otherwise the kids would probably fix up the properties and/or sell them.