Blog

Code Enforcement System

The Problem with Calling Neighborhoods with Vacant Properties “Blighted”

Blight is a shorthand term many people use to refer to properties they perceive as problematic in some way.

How Vacant and Abandoned Buildings Affect the Community

Vacant, abandoned, and deteriorated (VAD) properties—referred to by some as “blighted properties”—pose significant costs to public health, property values, local taxpayers, and more.

What is Code Enforcement?

Code enforcement from A to Z: when it works, when it doesn’t, and how local governments can make code enforcement systems more fair for all.

From Harm to Home: Replicating Detroit’s Make it Home Program

The City of Detroit’s innovative Make it Home program harnesses the power of the traditionally harmful property tax foreclosure process and uses it to increase affordable homeownership, improve housing conditions, and stabilize neighborhoods.

What does equitable code enforcement look like? How Louisville is taking steps to use its code enforcement process to advance racial equity

With technical assistance support from Community Progress, Louisville is reforming their housing and building code enforcement with equity in mind.

Approaches to Rural Property Vacancy in Law and Policy

This is an excerpt of Chapter 8 of Tackling Vacancy and Abandonment: Strategies and Impacts After the Great Recession, jointly produced by the Center for Community Progress, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. It has been lightly edited and condensed for the web….

A History of Ohio Land Banking 2009–2021: From Legislation to Operation

This is an excerpt of Chapter 7 of Tackling Vacancy and Abandonment: Strategies and Impacts After the Great Recession, jointly produced by the Center for Community Progress, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. It has been lightly edited and condensed for the web….

Developing and Implementing Property Remediation Strategies in Urban and Rural Communities in the Lehigh Valley: A Case Study of Bethlehem and Northampton County, Pennsylvania

This is an excerpt of Chapter 6 of Tackling Vacancy and Abandonment: Strategies and Impacts After the Great Recession, jointly produced by the Center for Community Progress, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. It has been lightly edited and condensed for the web. In…

Bay City Allocates $3 Million to Home Repair and Strategic Code Enforcement

Cities across the United States are receiving an unprecedented infusion of resources from the American Rescue Plan Act State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (ARPA SLFRF). Thanks to direct advocacy from Community Progress and our partners, the U.S. Treasury explicitly said communities can use ARPA SLFRF funds to address vacancy,…

Communities Across the US Are Addressing Property Deterioration and Vacancy With ARPA

States, Tribes, counties, and municipalities around the country have been hard at work determining how to use their allocations from the American Rescue Plan Act’s $350 billion State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund – which we often clumsily abbreviate as the ARPA SLFRF. Every unit of government should have already received at least the first…

Learning from Baltimore’s Vacants to Value: Part II

In my first post on this theme, I wrote about the thinking behind Baltimore’s highly successful effort to get private developers and property owners to rehabilitate vacant properties and put them back to use. As I noted, the key element in the strategy is creating a predictable pipeline of vacant properties…

Learning from Baltimore’s Vacants to Value: Part I

In 2010, the City of Baltimore kicked off an ambitious effort to address its vacant property challenges, an effort it called Vacants to Value (V2V). After five years, the city decided to commission an in-depth evaluation of the program, and after a competitive process, retained the Center for Community Progress,…

New report analyzes New Orleans’ rising rental costs

New Orleans has undergone many transformations in the 10+ years since Katrina. Today, with over half of New Orleans’ residents living in rental housing, and rents rising sharply in many neighborhoods across the city, affordability is becoming an acute problem. These are the findings of a new independent assessment conducted by the Center…

Communities aim to stabilize neighborhoods through effective rental registration and certification programs

Code enforcement is an important tool for addressing blighted property conditions and stabilizing neighborhoods. When we talk about that, however, we often focus on vacant, blighted property, and less so on occupied, blighted property. Many City and land bank-led initiatives have programs to demolish and rehab vacant, abandoned properties,…

Treasury announces final allocation of $1B in Hardest Hit Funds

Thirteen of the 19 participating Hardest Hit Fund states will receive additional dollars allocated through a competitive application process that required state Housing Finance Agencies (HFAs) to demonstrate an ongoing need for additional funding to prevent foreclosure and stabilize markets. According to Treasury, states receiving additional funds under the final…

The REAL rental housing issue

Originally posted on the National Housing Institute’s Rooflines blog We know a few things about the majority of very low-income renters: They live in private market housing, not tax credit projects or public housing. They receive no housing subsidies. They are paying far more than they can afford for what…

What is the cost of blight? What new research from Atlanta tells us

What is the cost of blight? We know that vacant properties cost cities through lost property tax revenue, and that they also bring down the property values of surrounding homes in the neighborhood. We know that cities have to spend considerable funds on activities like mowing lots or boarding up…

Treasury announces how $2 billion for Hardest Hit Fund will be allocated

Today, Treasury announced how it will allocate the additional $2 billion dollars for the Hardest Hit Fund (HHF) program approved by Congress last December. HHF funding will be allocated among participating States in two phases of $1 billion each. States have until December 31, 2020, to utilize funds, extended…

President’s Corner: Fresh approaches to the “preventive medicine” of vacant property revitalization

At Community Progress, we seek to help communities that are dealing with entrenched, often large-scale vacancy and abandonment in their neighborhoods. This is critically important, but it is not enough. In the same way that many in the healthcare sector have embraced the importance of preventive medicine, we must find…

Charting a new way forward through attorney-practitioner partnerships: Part II —Milwaukee

This is the second in a two-part series exploring how strong working partnerships between practitioners and attorneys can give rise to innovation in the work to reclaim and revitalize blighted properties. Missed Part I—Syracuse? Click here >> Let’s give ourselves a little breathing room In Milwaukee, a productive partnership between…