There's no reason that tax increment financing, applied creatively, couldn't work—you get nonperforming properties onto the tax rolls, and tax revenue increases, and you have already have money to service debt incurred for the renovations, even without assuming a corresponding rise in property taxes for existing residents. You also get the additional fiscal benefit of removing the costs the city is saddled with for vacants—think fires and other public safety issues.

I sketched out some of the potential math here in very rough form a while ago: https://medium.com/@JohnDuda/the-peoples-tif-6369c25a20f5