Letter from the Editor: Spotlight on Vacant Property Strategies

It’s been ten years since Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy - arguably the most memorable moment in the multi-phased financial crisis that rippled across communities throughout America. In most places, in addition to unprecedented unemployment rates, one of the most visible impacts of the recession was the proliferation of vacant homes, totaling more than 12 million in 2010. 

While the community development field has long had experience remediating vacant properties and lots as part of neighborhood revitalization strategies, the scale of vacancies after the financial and accompanying foreclosure crisis required utilizing not only well-tested tools, but also drawing on new strategies and systems to implement scalable solutions to identify and remediate these properties.  In this month’s spotlight, we've compiled some of these innovative tools.

In a Q&A with Jerry Paffendorf, co-Founder & CEO of LOVELAND Technologies, we hear why he decided to start a company that uses data to fight vacant property blight, and how they're making that technology available nationally. We also feature a new report from Alan Mallach of the Lincoln Land Institute that defines “hypervacancy” as when a concentration of vacant properties begins to define the character of a place, a more common occurence during the Recession. The report also highlights legacy cities that successfully have begun to jumpstart their housing markets. We also feature a few pieces “from the archives,” that touch on various LISC vacant property programs, including Helene Caloir’s white paper on the New York State Zombie Remediation Program. 

One thing to note is that while many resources and guides in the past have distinguished between “vacant lot” and “vacant property” strategies, particularly when discussing creative placemaking and community garden efforts, we see them as part of the same vacant residential remediation toolbox. Thus, we’ve featured resources that cover both types of strategies this month, but we will cover vacant industrial strategies in a future spotlight.