No, it's not "a few years". Cities act very quickly on this since broken windows make the dwelling open to all sorts of problems like animals coming in, people coming in (trespass, drug den, etc).
It was 3 years in my case, and they were only fixed because the house was finally foreclosed and sold to someone else. Critters had definitely moved in, and there was lots of water damage too. It was a real problem for me because it was a townhouse attached to mine. That was the last time I ever owned an attached dwelling.
