What is Systemic Vacancy

History of Vacancy and disinvestment

Neighborhoods are constantly changing in American cities. After World War II, older cities lost much of their population and economic activity to the emerging suburbs. Many once-stable urban neighborhoods collapsed as their middle class left, leaving lower-income people with diminishing employment opportunities, dilapidated housing, poor public services, and rampant crime. Other neighborhoods lost vitality, as abandoned properties began appearing on well-maintained streets, crime rose, and vacant storefronts punctuated once-thriving neighborhood commercial strips.

Private capital fled these cities and neighborhoods. Fewer people – particularly people with money – chose to live in urban areas, older industries became less competitive, and fewer new businesses chose to locate in urban downtowns or neighborhood commercial corridors. As real estate values declined, many owners stopped investing in their properties, creating the blight of abandoned properties that still characterizes many American cities.  

That pattern has changed dramatically since the 1990s. Demand for urban living has grown, fueled by rising immigration, increased demand for lively, walkable environments, increased preference for urban environments on the part of both young adults and aging empty-nester baby boomers, constraints on suburban development and the emergence of new industries and technologies more oriented to urban life. Since 2000, these forces have fueled dramatic increases in home prices not only in global cities such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, but also in smaller cities such as New Haven, Connecticut or Elizabeth, New Jersey.

Since 2000, home values in many urban neighborhoods have skyrocketed. Owners of rental properties have upgraded them in order to charge higher rents or convert them to condominiums, while developers bought once-worthless vacant lots to build infill housing. Tax delinquencies have declined, and city-owned property inventories have dwindled. Long-time tenants and homeowners have come to face growing pressure from higher rents and property taxes. Even in many cities that have experienced limited overall market change, such as Pittsburgh or Cleveland, individual neighborhoods have experienced dramatic transformations.

Growth takes place in cycles. Since 2006, the market transformation that seemed so overwhelming has lost much of its steam, while the foreclosure crisis triggered by the proliferation of unsustainable subprime mortgage lending placed many urban neighborhoods, including many that appeared to be thriving only a few years earlier, once again at risk. Many CDCs that only recently were addressing the issues stemming from market appreciation are now trying to preserve their gains from a wave of foreclosures. Even so, these developments represent a pause, not a reversal, of the long-term trend of urban reinvestment and market change.

Systemic vacancy and racism

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