Blog

Racial Equity

Why Heirs’ Property is a Problem for Vacancy and Abandonment

To address vacant, abandoned, and deteriorated (VAD) properties, local governments must first identify what types of VAD properties exist in the community. Some properties are abandoned with no mortgage and near tax foreclosure. Some fall into disrepair during a long mortgage foreclosure process. In other cases, a property owner may…

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 Communities

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.

Helping Land Banks Advance Racial Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

In the Land Bank DEI Learning Cohort, eight land banks learned how to disrupt racial injustice to better serve their communities.

Explaining the Cycle of Systemic Vacancy

Systemic vacancy is the community experience of widespread property vacancy caused by the combined actions of people, policies, and processes.

Lessons from 2023 VAD Academy: Systemic Racism is a Root Cause of Vacant Properties

The key lesson from this year’s VAD Academy: systemic racism is a root cause of vacant, abandoned, deteriorated properties.

How the Tri-COG Land Bank is Transforming Vacant Properties in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania

Representing Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, the Tri-COG land bank has had enormous success in its first five years of operation.

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.

Building Resilience: Leveraging Innovative Partnerships and Low Cost Capital to Meet Affordable Single-Family Housing Needs

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 President/CEO Dr. Akilah Watkins’ US House of Representatives Ways & Means Committee Affordable Housing Testimony

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-…

Publication: Championing Leaders of Color

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….

New Paper by Alan Mallach – Making the Comeback: Reversing the Downward Trajectory of Black Middle Neighborhoods in Legacy Cities

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:…

Top 5 Racial Equity Resources: Community Progress Picks

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…

New Webinars Unlock the Black Middle Neighborhood Challenges and Opportunities

In the last twenty years, predominantly African-American ‘middle neighborhoods’ have endured the same challenges as other communities, but with different results. The historic injustices that were thought to be issues of the past show up in modern terms in both challenges and opportunities in the wake of today’s growing social…

Community Progress Announces Juneteenth Closure

Dear Partners, This Friday, June 19th, the Center for Community Progress will be closed in celebration of Juneteenth. As our staff and team enjoy the day as a paid holiday, we encourage all who regularly commemorate July 4th that marks the independence of our nation to join in celebrating this important…

Life Should Not be Determined by a Person’s Race [the Death of George Floyd]

We at the Center for Community Progress are enraged and grief-stricken at the loss of yet another Black life at the hands of police. Since 1619, the compounding symptoms of a problematic culture have systematically disenfranchised people of color in America. The unjust, preventable murder of George Floyd was one…

How to stop predatory land contracts and rent-to-own scams: require habitability

Any views or opinions represented in this blog post belong solely to the guest blog author. By: Sarah B. Mancini and Margot Saunders, National Consumer Law Center The historical abuse of “contract for deed” transactions to drain communities of color of home equity is well documented. In these land contracts, the…

Making the connection between vacant properties, community wellbeing, and social justice

In the wake of continued police violence in communities of color across the nation, we have witnessed the strengthening of movements against brutality. With its origins in the events of Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland, the “Black Lives Matter” movement has pushed the belief that the injustice and violence that…

Inequality in America’s housing: 5 findings from the State of the Nation’s Housing Report

The Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University recently released its annual State of the Nation’s Housing report. The report takes a sweeping look at housing trends in America, finding an increasingly competitive rental market and falling homeownership numbers. The report also provides compelling data depicting the sober reality of social and racial…