KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- The Kansas City Council has passed an ordinance that they hope will give the city more power to clean up vacant properties.

The council passed an ordinance that would allow the city to fix up, demolish or sell vacant buildings whose almost 7,000 owners have failed to keep them up.

"It gives us another tool to make some headway on it," said councilman John Sharp. "The enormity of the problem is very tough. It's just exploded."

KCTV5 went to an Eastside neighborhood where the vacant houses outnumber the residents to see the problems that vacant houses can present. Boarded-up and empty structures line Poplar Avenue between 31st and 29th streets.

"People want to get in a house and they want to start doing drugs," said a man named Doc, who lives in the neighborhood. "It's unreal anymore."

Doc and about six families who live along Poplar said the vacant houses attract criminals and drugs.

"It’s frustrating seeing them driving down the street with whatever they're smoking," Doc said. "If they hit my car, I'm out of work."

Steven Bundy said the vacant houses have killed the real estate values on his street and attracted crime. Earlier this week his wife, Sharon, was killed in their home while he was at work in the middle of the night delivering newspapers.

Bundy wonders if the intruder entered his home thinking it was another empty house along the street.