National Reclaiming Vacant Properties Conference Comes to Baltimore in 2016 (Press Release)

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The seventh national Reclaiming Vacant Properties Conference will come to Baltimore, Maryland, on September 28-30, 2016, announced the Center for Community Progress, a national nonprofit and host of the event. The conference will be held at the Hilton Baltimore and is expected to draw approximately 1,000 professionals to the city.

The conference will explore the latest tools to strengthen neighborhoods that are being left behind in the housing recovery and continue to struggle with property challenges including: vacancy, abandonment, tax delinquency, foreclosure and disinvestment. Conference sessions will highlight work from around the country, including efforts in Baltimore.

“Baltimore faces major challenges related to vacant properties. But the city is also home to many innovative efforts to create safe, stable neighborhoods of opportunity for all residents,” said Tamar Shapiro, president and CEO of the Center for Community Progress. “Against that backdrop, Baltimore feels like the perfect setting for the learning and exchanges that happen at the national Reclaiming Vacant Properties Conference.”

The Center for Community Progress selected Baltimore as the site of the conference because of the opportunity to showcase the work underway among the city’s vibrant nonprofit and community-based organizations, as well as in local government, philanthropy, and other institutions, to reactivate the city’s thousands of vacant, abandoned properties.

Held every eighteen months, the Reclaiming Vacant Properties Conference is the sole national conference dedicated to helping communities find new solutions for vacant, abandoned, tax-delinquent, and other problem properties. It attracts and connects professionals from many interrelated fields, including community development, urban policy, code enforcement, affordable housing, land banking, urban planning, economic development, and public safety.

More information about the Reclaiming Vacant Properties Conference is available on the Center for Community Progress website.

About Center for Community Progress

Founded in 2010, the Center for Community Progress is the only national 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization solely dedicated to building a future in which entrenched, systemic blight no longer exists in American communities. The mission of Community Progress is to ensure that communities have the vision, knowledge, and systems to transform blighted, vacant, and other problem properties into assets supporting neighborhood vitality. As a national leader on solutions for blight and vacancy, Community Progress serves as the leading resource for local, state and federal policies and best practices that address the full cycle of property revitalization.