Nutter plans to:
Identify owners of vacant, blighted lots and buildings.
Begin fining them $300 a day for each window and door not up to code, meaning they must be usable and not boarded up.
Take owners who do not comply to Municipal Court's new "blight court," which can force them to fix their properties or pay the fines. The court has muscle because of a state law passed last year that lets the city go after owners' personal assets if they don't comply.
Fran Burns, commissioner of the city Department of Licenses and Inspections and architect of the new strategy, said that although fines were a heavy component, the real goal was to encourage owners to rehabilitate properties and sell them or rent them out.
"If you own your property, you're responsible for maintaining it," Burns said.
Although the program has existed for several months, Nutter used the news conference to warn the public that the city would no longer tolerate blight.
He said vacant parcels become magnets for crime and trash. The city has 30,000 to 40,000 vacant properties, and they cost $8,000 per household in reduced property values, or $3.6 billion citywide, according to a study by Econsult Corp.
Nutter also said the city was overhauling the way it sells an estimated 12,000 vacant parcels it owns.
Under the current system, several government agencies, including the city Redevelopment Authority, Public Property Department, the Philadelphia Housing Development Corp., and the Philadelphia Housing Authority, own those properties. Each organization has different rules for property sales, making acquiring parcels quickly complicated for buyers.
"If you're trying to assemble a bunch of different properties, that's a daunting task," said Rick Sauer, executive director of the Philadelphia Association of Community Development Corps.
Sauer said he hoped the city creates a land bank, but that requires legislation from Harrisburg, where State Rep. John Taylor has proposed it.
