

However, tight credit, weak markets, population loss, or other factors may require other solutions suchĪ solar farm on a former industrial site). The most desired outcome is to quickly return a property to its previous use -Īn owner-occupied residence or a thriving business. Local political and economic contexts, as well as limitations of capacity and resources, shape the tools that local governments, nonprofits, and neighbors employ to address and reuse vacant and abandoned properties. The approach taken to reclaim one vacant property among many in a distressed Detroit neighborhood, for example, will be different from that taken to reclaim a property in a rebounding Phoenix suburb - or, for that matter, in another Detroit neighborhood with a healthy housing market. Although nationwide factors (in particular, the foreclosure crisis) helped create these vacancies, local factors - the condition of the properties, the health of the local housing market, and the strength of the regional economy - are what shape the range of options available for returning these properties to productive use. These communities face mounting blight and physical deterioration of properties, declining tax revenues, and rising public costs. Vacant and abandoned properties have long plagued the industrial cities of America’s Rust Belt, but the spike in foreclosures following the recent recession has compounded problems for these areas and has caused vacancy rates to surge nationwide, especially in recently booming Sun Belt states such as Florida, Arizona, and Nevada. To them, empty homes can become assets in neighborhood stabilization and revitalization that can be renovated and reoccupied. Opportunities for productive reuse, reimagining blight and dilapidation as urban farms, community gardens, and health facilities. Property values, and escalating municipal Most visible outward signs of a community’s Photo courtesy: Sara InnamoratoDerelict houses, dormant factories, Vacant lots can be greened and repurposed for new uses, such as this play area in Pittsburgh’s East Liberty neighborhood. It is critical to match strategies for combating vacancy to neighborhood market conditions.The maintenance orĭemolition of vacant properties is a huge expense for many cities. (particularly arson) and declining property values. Vacant and abandoned properties are linked to increased rates of crime.The absence of universal definitions of vacancy and abandonmentĬomplicates efforts to assess the number of vacant and abandoned.Temporary Urbanism: Alternative Approaches to Vacant Land Vacant and Abandoned Properties: Turning Liabilities Into AssetsĬountywide Land Banks Tackle Vacancy and Blight
