Pennsylvania passes receivership law with regard to vacant/nuisance properties.

In 2002, I attended my first annual meeting of the National Historic Preservation Conference of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, held that year in Cleveland.

If you're interested in urban revitalization, this is an important conference, because you go to other places and have the opportunity to consume a lot of information about best practices. It's augmented and accelerated if you get a chance to go on tours--usually of revitalized neighborhoods, commercial districts, and industrial areas--and check out places on your own. (It's why I can write authoritatively about places like Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Portland, having attended Trust conferences in those cities.)

On various tours, I learned that Ohio has a receivership statute which allows nonprofits to take over properties that have been deemed habitual nuisances, to cure the nuisance. In certain circumstances, when the nuisance is abated, the nonprofit can be awarded ownership of the property. In Cleveland, the Cleveland Restoration Society's housing division was then active in rehabilitating houses under this statute. This was a means to an end. They then sold the properties to people who agreed to live in and maintain the property.

- Ohio Revised Code; Title 37: Health-Safety-Morals; Chapter 3767, Nuisances; Section 3767.41

(In a weak real estate market, this is usually done at a loss to the nonprofit, because maintaining properties to historic standards is more costly and isn't covered by the kind of increase in value that obtains in a strong market like DC or Manhattan or Brooklyn.)

So from 2002 to probably 2005/2006 I testified about demolition by neglect and dealing with nuisance properties. DC doesn't have a law on the lines of the Ohio receivership statute. Then it had a very convoluted law giving certain authority to the Dept. of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs to deal with nuisance properties. And DC hasn't addressed such properties all that well, although the increased property tax for nuisance properties does help, somewhat, move some properties into the market, out of the hands of property owners who for whatever reason, aren't motivated by normal market forces.

The thing is, dealing with nuisance properties is very much dependent on whether or not the metropolitan and local real estate market is strong or weak. DC has much more opportunity (even though it hasn't always done that well, see "Can’t Go Home Again: How a District program to fight blight preserves vacant lots, instead" from the Washington City Paper) than weak markets like Baltimore ("One house at a time" and "Rawlings-Blake unveils plan for vacant housing" from the Baltimore Sun) or Flint, Michigan ("The Man Who Owns Flint" from Governing Magazine). Baltimore now is calling on rapid demolition of thousands of properties because of the potential of fire and other problems.

My testimonies called for the creation of a receivership statute in DC, but with the same kind of hardcore requirements involved in Ohio. Nonprofits in DC have a tendency to warehouse and misuse properties too, such as the Shiloh Baptist Church (see "Evans withdraws Shiloh bill" from the Washington Business Journal) or community development corporations such as the People's Involvement Corporation. And even DC Government does a pretty bad job managing property in many cases. So I argued that institutions such as these may not be deemed a fit participant in receivership programs. And to get control of a property, a nuisance abatement plan has to be created, and to get ownership of a property, the abatement plan has to be properly executed.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports, in "Under Pa. law, neighbors control abandoned lot" that Pennsylvania has passed a receivership statute, which functions comparable to the statute that is in force in Ohio.

- Pennsylvania abandoned and blighted property conservatorship act

I think this is better, more a form of self-help, than looking to local government for all the answers, especially because local government can be manipulated by business interests. People in government agencies tend to be focused on demolition, not on dealing with the getting a property or neighborhood back to habitation.

Although there are some instances where builders and/or community development corporations take a stand and do the right thing and rehabilitate properties and neighborhoods through concerted programs and portfolio investment.

Three examples from Baltimore (all from the Baltimore Sun):

- Builder taps East Baltimore roots to transform housing, neighborhood

- the article "Finding a Way: Leaders and residents offer possible cures for the American Brewery neighborhood" describes the activities of the Patterson Park Community Development Corporation in stabilizing and improving the Patterson Park neighborhood. Later the CDC did shut down, but only after successfully rehabilitating more than 200 properties.

- and in Patterson Park, after the CDC shut down, some neighbors pitched in together to buy the building that housed the CDC, "Neighbors join forces to buy Patterson Park building."