Turning Zombies Into Assets: Emerging Best Practices from the LISC Zombie Program

LISC staff discuss our NY State Housing program and are joined by partners from Niagara Falls and Albany in New York. Watch the recording for a conversation about emerging best practices in New York State and how to replicate them in your municipalities.

“Zombie” properties, unlike other vacants, are those for which foreclosure proceedings have been initiated, but for a variety of reasons, never completed. Because the owners and lien-holders can be difficult to locate and hold accountable, the properties can languish as vacants for years, deteriorating over time to become nuisances to their neighborhoods and towns. Municipalities across New York found themselves with high levels of these zombie properties in 2014 and 2015, even though the housing crisis had otherwise eased a few years before.

LISC staff discuss our NY State Housing program and are joined by partners from Niagara Falls and Albany in New York.  Niagara uses unique strategies to bring lien-holding banks to the table to problem solve their distressed properties …and take the fight to court if necessary. Albany’s “quarterback” model marshals people and data across departments and with partners to develop targeted strategies to turn zombies into city assets.

Watch this recording for a conversation about emerging best practices in New York State and how to replicate them in your municipalities.

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For additional information on this topic, read this report from LISC's Helene Caloir, which provides a brief overview of the “Zombie” and Vacant Properties Remediation and Prevention Initiative, including its history, challenges, and emerging best practices.

Read the Report

In this podcast, Maurice A. Jones, Helene Caloir and Morgan Harper delve deeper into the world of Zombie and vacant properties and suggest successful ways to bring these properties back to life to revitalize communities. 

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