I believe she would say such cities are about to be threatened by economic seizures. What you're seeing, IMO, is the visible part of wealth inequality.

You probably think those store fronts are owned by one person each. If they are, that person, or entity, owns many. It's better for them if they geta huge profit on 2/10 of them, than a modest profit on 8 of them (which would have more risk). With the boomers graying, most of reduced their income needs to aren't very sensitive to that change in income. If they need money, they can borrow against those properties, even if empty.

Sure, the tax laws could be changed, taxing the property first, but that would only end up with the government owning a lot of empty store fronts (which it might already do from past QE). Why?

The hard truth is those owners could let people open businesses in those stores for FREE and still those businesses would probably not make it. I believe most stores pay 5% to 10% of sales to rent. So though commercial rents sound high, they're not in the scheme of things.

Again, income inequality. There just isn't enough money to support all leisure shopping in all these middle-class neighborhoods.

There are few vacancies in two types of places. 1. Working class, where you're not going to get some boutique to pay top dollar even if you wanted, but there's enough foot traffic for businesses to survive. 2. Top 5% wealth where they're so bored they'll spend money for $500 t-shirts.

The rest, like your town, face a future no one probably wants to think about. I've thought about it. My prediction is the pain hasn't even started yet. (Fortunately, I'm usually wrong).