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Building Local Capacity to Address Vacant Properties in Puerto Rico

A color photograph of a sunny street in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, lined with historic multi-story buildings painted in vivid shades of coral pink, orange, teal, and green. The buildings feature ornate white-trimmed balconies with wrought iron railings, wooden shutters, and potted plants spilling over the railings. A decorative cast iron street lamp stands in the foreground, and a speed limit sign is visible at the far left.
Outline of the state of New York, with a yellow dot on Rochester.

Puerto Rico

Project Date: 2015-2026

Services: Land Banking, Capacity Building, Legal Reform

Client: Center for Habitat Reconstruction / Centro para la Reconstrucción del Hábitat

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When Everything Hits at Once: Addressing Vacancy in Puerto Rico

Three years before the 2009 real estate market crash in the U.S., Puerto Rico’s housing bubble burst, triggering a recession that lasted 15 years. Reflecting Puerto Rico’s colonial relationship to the U.S., Congress appointed an oversight board to control decisions affecting the islands’ recovery. By the time Hurricanes Irma and Maria hit in 2017, Puerto Ricans were deep in fiscal austerity. Then came a global pandemic, a housing crisis, infrastructure collapse, overtourism, extractive tax policy, and the migration of over 700,000 people from the islands. It is hard to overstate the magnitude of the struggle.

Today, one in four homes in Puerto Rico sits vacant. That represents nearly 375,000 homes, not including structure-free lots and other vacant buildings. Since 2000, the home vacancy rate has doubled.

THE TASK

Puerto Ricans have confronted these seemingly insurmountable challenges with optimism, entrepreneurial spirit, and deep community connection. In 2015, a group of local municipal officials, volunteers, and activists invited the Center for Community Progress to bring our national expertise to the problem of vacant, abandoned, and deteriorated (VAD) properties in Puerto Rico.

Together, Community Progress and local leaders embarked on a decade-long partnership to build trust, strengthen local capacity, and reform laws across the territory and its municipalities.

SOLUTION

Community Progress’ analysis of local policies and practices revealed outdated tools and weak authority for communities to act on VAD properties. Listening sessions across the islands helped our team understand the daily impact of vacant properties in diverse communities. To build capacity and local leadership, we shared best practices from the field, including effective state policy frameworks, and convened practitioners through our learning engagements.

Community Progress technical assistance services across Puerto Rico have included:

That support and investment enabled local leaders to tailor those resources to the needs of Puerto Rican communities. It also revealed an opportunity to go beyond forming a single land bank, and instead build an entire ecosystem. In fact, local leaders went on to found their own organization modeled on the Center for Community Progress in Puerto Rico. Over time, they built out the tools to increase readiness and help communities transform vacant, abandoned, and deteriorated properties into assets for neighbors and neighborhoods.

IMPACT

As a result of the partnership with Community Progress, local leaders have increased the capacity and capabilities for addressing VAD properties in Puerto Rico by:

Investing in Local Leadership

  • Creation of the Centro para la Reconstrucción del Hábitat (CRH), the islands’ only nonprofit dedicated exclusively to addressing VAD properties
  • Executive coaching to strengthen CRH’s organizational capacity and leadership infrastructure
  • Nomination of CRH’s Executive Director, Luis Gallardo, to the Community Progress Board of Directors
  • Engaging community leaders focused on place keeping with Community Progress’ Community Revitalization Fellowship in Loíza, Puerto Rico
  • Recipient of the Community Progress and Wells Fargo Clearing Title and Catalyzing Neighborhoods Award to address heirs property

Adopting New Legal Tools

  • Act 130-2016 established the first community land bank in San Juan
  • Act 157-2016 allowed nuisance properties without estates to be transferred to municipal government and/or a land bank
  • Act 107-2022 enabled land banks through the Puerto Rico Municipal Code
  • Act 97-2026 amended the municipal code to create procedural flexibility for municipalities to deal with nuisance properties
  • Eight municipal ordinances activated new land banks across the islands, including in Yauco, Isabela, Adjuntas, Naguabo, Utuado, Guánica, Hormigueros, and Vega Baja
  • Established Puerto Rico’s first community-based land bank on the island of Culebra

A graphic combining text and a photograph. The text on the left is headlined "From P.S. 1676 to Act 107-2022" and describes how the passage of Act 107, particularly its chapter on land banks, resulted from four years of intense advocacy by CRH and its staff, who met with dozens of mayors, legislators, and other stakeholders. The photograph on the right shows three people — two men and a woman — seated at a conference table with microphones, papers, and cups in front of them, appearing to participate in a formal legislative or policy meeting.

CRH is now Puerto Rico’s leading capacity building organization addressing VAD properties. Their motto, “Ni gente sin casas. Ni casas sin gente.” (“No people without homes. No homes without people.”), reflects its mission to repurpose vacant properties within the context of a housing crisis. They have a contract with the Puerto Rico Department of Housing for a vacant property conditions survey across all 78 municipalities, and have provided technical assistance to hundreds of local officials, municipalities, and nonprofit/community-based organizations.

CRH does whatever it takes to achieve its mission, including becoming a certified Community Development Finance Institution (CDFI) and building an in-house construction team.

Land Banks and Land Banking 2nd Edition (en Español)

The cover of a publication titled "Bancos de Tierras y el Manejo de Su Tenencia" (Land Banks and the Management of Their Inventory), Segunda Edición, Traducción al Español, 2022, published by the Center for Community Progress. The cover features six photographs arranged in diagonal bands showing residential properties, historic brick rowhouses, a group of people collaborating around a table, a colorful public art installation, and urban buildings. The author is listed as Frank S. Alexander, Sam Nunn Professor of Law at Emory University School of Law and co-founder and senior advisor of the Center for Community Progress.

Interested in these services for your community? We can help! Contact the Technical Assistance Team »

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