Blight is a word borrowed from plants. That is not an accident, and it is not a metaphor the city was shy about.
A blighted crop is not injured. It is diseased, and the disease is in the thing itself, and the only responsible act is to cut it out before it spreads. Say that about a neighborhood and you have said everything you need to say. You do not have to argue that the people should go. You have already established that something is wrong with them.
What the word never has to mention is who let the pipes go, who stopped the loans, who declined the repairs. The city withheld the water and then indicted the ground for being dry.