Tag: vacant properties

About 50 people—mostly single mothers and their children—have been living in vacant Philadelphia Housing Authority units since March. The move-ins are both acts of necessity and a political protest against the PHA.

Thinking of abandoned properties as merely problems we wish would go away feeds into some of the less productive ways vacant properties have been handled.

Vacant properties are a serious problem in two kinds of neighborhoods. To address them, we need to know which kind we’re looking at.

Abandoned and vacant properties seem like a quintessentially local problem. But state policies have a huge effect on how well municipalities can fight it.

Baltimore’s Vacants to Value program sparked revitalization block by block with a few key legal powers and partnerships.

The fight against vacancy in Youngstown, Ohio, shows us that we shouldn’t rely on a single strategy—everything is needed at once.

Vacant land activities can be low cost and high impact; the price of failure is not steep, but the return on investment can be high.

The number of land banks grew dramatically in the wake of the foreclosure crisis. So has our understanding of how to successfully fund them.

How a Baltimore collaborative plans to make shared-equity housing a significant sector in the local housing market.

More than a decade after several groups came together to improve substandard housing in the South Side of Columbus, signs of gentrification and forced displacement are beginning to emerge. Can something be done so current residents can afford to stay in their neighborhoods for years to come? The short answer is yes.

When I tell people that food pantries can be a new and innovative way to help lift up communities, they look at me as...

A: Nope. They are totally different, though complementary tools. This chart will walk you through the differences.

Community gardens and urban agriculture are crucial gathering places—and revitalizing forces—in neighborhoods with lots of vacancy and low values. But what happens to them when the market turns around?

This time of economic uncertainty presents an opportunity for the community development movement to reinvent itself.

To save a neighborhood that’s in danger of going down, you can’t simply add new homes. You have to put the process of decline in reverse

Photo Courtesy of HANDS Inc. For 12 years the building at 151 Chapman Street (above) stood vacant on a prominent corner, a menacing landmark that...