Community Progress regularly posts to this blog on a range of related topics to help communities across the country turn vacant spaces into vibrant places. Please check back regularly, and sign up for our newsletter to receive the latest news directly in your inbox.

Representing Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, the Tri-COG land bank has had enormous success in its first five years of operation.
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Picture a neighborhood with numerous run-down homes, vacant lots, and boarded-up buildings, grounds or structure overgrown with vegetation. What word comes to mind to describe those conditions? For many, that word is “blight.” Blight is a shorthand term many people use to refer to properties they perceive as problematic in…
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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.
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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.
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With technical assistance support from Community Progress, Louisville is reforming their housing and building code enforcement with equity in mind.
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This is an excerpt of Chapter 10 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….
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On July 13, Community Progress CEO and President Dr. Akilah Watkins spoke before the The US House of Representatives Ways & Means Committee in a hearing called “Nowhere to Live: Profits, Disinvestment, and The American Housing Crisis.” The hearing discussed factors driving up housing costs, the effects of these costs on low-…
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Download the Full Report Community development unites people to take collective action to build stronger, more resilient places to live. Its roots are embedded in the backyards, living rooms, and church halls of people who, out of sheer will and perseverance, found ways to advocate for change in their neighborhoods….
Read More...In city after city, the Black middle neighborhoods face the most significant challenges and have seen the sharpest declines across the country when compared to other middle neighborhoods. Black middle neighborhoods lead in the struggle to receive public help, programs, amenities, and more. In a new paper, Making the Comeback:…
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Today’s growing social justice movement is experiencing a new surge as Black and Brown communities continue to grapple with the long-term effects created by decades of disinvestment, economic oppression, and systemic racism. The work to reverse hundreds of years of racial injustice is no easy feat, but the need to…
Read More...Representing Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, the Tri-COG land bank has had enormous success in its first five years of operation.
Read More...Picture a neighborhood with numerous run-down homes, vacant lots, and boarded-up buildings, grounds or structure overgrown with vegetation. What word comes to mind to describe those conditions? For many, that word is “blight.” Blight is a shorthand term many people use to refer to properties they perceive as problematic in…
Read More...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.
Read More...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.
Read More...With technical assistance support from Community Progress, Louisville is reforming their housing and building code enforcement with equity in mind.
Read More...This is an excerpt of Chapter 10 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….
Read More...On July 13, Community Progress CEO and President Dr. Akilah Watkins spoke before the The US House of Representatives Ways & Means Committee in a hearing called “Nowhere to Live: Profits, Disinvestment, and The American Housing Crisis.” The hearing discussed factors driving up housing costs, the effects of these costs on low-…
Read More...Download the Full Report Community development unites people to take collective action to build stronger, more resilient places to live. Its roots are embedded in the backyards, living rooms, and church halls of people who, out of sheer will and perseverance, found ways to advocate for change in their neighborhoods….
Read More...In city after city, the Black middle neighborhoods face the most significant challenges and have seen the sharpest declines across the country when compared to other middle neighborhoods. Black middle neighborhoods lead in the struggle to receive public help, programs, amenities, and more. In a new paper, Making the Comeback:…
Read More...Today’s growing social justice movement is experiencing a new surge as Black and Brown communities continue to grapple with the long-term effects created by decades of disinvestment, economic oppression, and systemic racism. The work to reverse hundreds of years of racial injustice is no easy feat, but the need to…
Read More...