Technical Assistance Scholarships

Technical Assistance Scholarships (TAS) enable communities to pilot innovative programs and practices to address vacant, abandoned, and deteriorated (VAD) properties that can become models for the broader field.

Through TAS, Community Progress provides customized technical assistance at no cost or a significant discount to:

Support communities most in need
Partner with visionary practitioners and local leaders committed to racial equity
Innovate in the broader community development and neighborhood revitalization field

Technical Assistance Scholarship: Code Enforcement

In January of 2025, Community Progress released the second round of code enforcement scholarships. The solicitation drew a record number of thoughtful applications from communities across the country.

Three applicants were competitively selected in March to receive customized, high-impact technical assistance at no cost, from a team of national experts at Community Progress. Scholarship recipients, and a brief description of their projects, are listed below:

Savannah, Georgia: Assess data collection and management practices and identify cost-effective reforms that enhance inter-departmental coordination and advance a strategic approach to increase code compliance rates.
Jackson, Mississippi: Identify the City’s major pain points in effectively tackling harmful, vacant properties, build local consensus on priorities, and develop a fundraising strategy for a long-term partnership.
Providence, Rhode Island: Better understand the problem of deteriorating, occupied rental properties, and recommend better solutions that will support tenants, landlords, and neighborhoods.

Engagements will conclude at the end of 2025. Resources developed in support of these communities will be available on our website.

More information about the technical assistance scholarship for code enforcement is below.

The Need for Code Enforcement Reform

Housing and building code enforcement’s primary function is to protect and strengthen public health and safety. It is also one of a government’s most important tools to stabilize and strengthen neighborhoods. Our experience working with hundreds of diverse communities across the country, however, has shown that the traditional approach to code enforcement is due for urgent review and reevaluation, particularly in neighborhoods with weak housing markets, high levels of poverty, and widespread vacancy.

Traditionally, most local governments rely on complaints to identify violations, and civil and criminal penalties to enforce local property maintenance ordinances. This reactive and punitive-centric approach may be effective in stable or strong real estate markets and when owners have the resources to make repairs. However, in weak real estate markets, this approach is often inequitable, inefficient, and ineffective. Many low-income homeowners lack the resources to make repairs, and most corporate landlords, knowing they can avoid prosecution, reject investments in routine maintenance to protect and maximize profit margins. And the metrics used by most code enforcement departments to track success—how many tickets were issued and how much in fines were levied—don’t align with the goals of compliance, public health and safety, and neighborhood vitality.

There is an urgent need, especially for those communities that struggle with VAD properties, to shift from traditional code enforcement to strategic code compliance—an approach that is far more equitable, effective, and efficient. Our first round of technical assistance scholarships in 2024 will help communities make this shift.

Past Scholarship Recipients

In February 2024, Community Progress launched the first round of our code enforcement technical assistance scholarships and competitively selected three communities. Scholarship recipients, and a brief description of their projects, are listed below:

Birmingham, Alabama: Newly passed state law gives the City of Birmingham the ability to add code enforcement fines and nuisance abatement costs as priority liens on vacant properties—a key policy tool of a strategic code compliance approach. Community Progress is helping Birmingham develop the internal systems and processes to strategically identify which code liens to efficiently and equitably foreclose on using a judicially supervised process that will protect property interests and produce insurable title.

Cleveland, Ohio: The City of Cleveland’s code enforcement department is embarking on a period of growth and hiring new officers to support the City’s implementation of its newly passed Residents First legislation. Community Progress is helping Cleveland develop a training curriculum that centers many of the principles of a strategic code compliance approach. The curriculum will support the onboarding of these new code enforcement officers and ensure the entire code team has a baseline knowledge of codes, processes, partners, and critical skills that are necessary to work with community members and property owners to reach compliance.

Lima, Ohio: The City of Lima has been actively working towards many of the strategies that align with a strategic code compliance approach. Still, Lima has a large inventory of vacant privately-owned properties that remain stuck. Community Progress is assessing their code enforcement approach across three types of VAD properties (vacant, owner-occupied, renter-occupied) to improve effectiveness, strengthen partnerships, and achieve equitable outcomes.

Resources developed in support of these communities will be posted here and to our publication page.