The parishioner evidently had deep pockets then. Otherwise how do you explain having five houses? This then raises the question of what condition the houses were when they were acquired by the church?

If they were livable at the time, then why wasn't that pursued at a time when it would have been much easier to keep them afloat rather than they sit for decades and fall apart?

30 years is a really really long time to sit on properties and to be very frank, that shouldn't be allowed in the first place.

I'm assuming that Mt Vernon wasn't a slum 30 years ago so I have a hard time making sense of such valuable real estate just sitting there without any real buyers.