vacant properties

A Philadelphia program is cleaning up abandoned lots, helping formerly incarcerated residents get jobs, and improving the overall health and well-being of neighborhoods.

Demolition can generate emotional reactions, especially in places with a history of urban renewal. But critics of demolishing any vacant homes are ignoring the evidence.

Signs like the one above went up at Chicago’s Lathrop Homes a few Fridays ago. In 1999, the Chicago Housing Authority, in step with other housing authorities throughout the country, began […]

596 Acres creates tools to help neighbors “Find the lot of their lives” by: making municipal information about vacant public land available online through a searchable map and on the […]

As some cities begin to admit they are shrinking, CDCs in high-abandonment neighborhoods are rethinking their traditional roles, and even their missions.

Urban agriculture projects bring hope — and food — to communities that have long suffered from a glut of empty lots.

Bringing Buildings Back addresses all sides of the abandoned and vacant property problem, from how abandonment can be prevented to how best to bring these properties back into productive reuse.

A few years ago, we warned that lenders, particularly GSEs like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, would take punitive measures on people who made strategic defaults on their homes, and […]

The story of the American foreclosure crisis begins with reckless and abusive lending that leads to a wholesale emptying out of homes. But the story is far from over. 

You’ve probably seen the most recent story in The New York Times about the troubles facing Flint, Michigan, and the latest in an ongoing dialogue examining shutting down parts of […]

Using an ancient common law right of self-help nuisance abatement, one neighborhood was able to board up vacant houses and evict the drug dealers. What do you do when drug […]