To be successful, local neighborhood stabilization programs need a packaged set of robust remedies: Part 2

This piece is mostly focused on "weak market" neighborhoods, although even strong markets have properties that lag because of poor management, lack of means to maintain properties, non-market factors, etc.

As the report Vacant Properties: The True Costs to Communities by the National Vacant Properties Campaign makes clear, vacant properties and I would extend this argument to nuisance properties more generally, have negative effects on neighborhoods in terms of property value reduction, creating unsafe conditions, diminishing perceptions and identity, reducing quality of life, and often, spreading failure and vacancy to other nearby properties.

That's why focused neighborhood improvement programs need to be able to address vacant and nuisance properties in practical ways, at a velocity that typically needs to be much faster than cities and counties are normally capable of acting.

This piece is part two of a series.

-- "The need for a "national" neighborhood stabilization program comparable to the Main Street program for commercial districts: Part I (Overall)"
-- "To be successful, local neighborhood stabilization programs need a packaged set of robust remedies: Part 2"
-- "Creating 'community safety partnership neighborhood management programs as a management and mitigation strategy for public nuisance programs: Part 3 (like homeless shelters)"
-- "A case in Gloucester, Massachusetts as an illustration of the need for systematic neighborhood monitoring and stabilization initiatives: Part 4 (the Curcuru Family)"
-- "Local neighborhood stabilization programs: Part 5 | Adding energy conservation programs, with the PUSH Buffalo Green Development Zone as a model," 2021

 
Adding remedies and other regulatory supports to neighborhood improvement efforts: the lesson from historic preservation.  One of the key things I learned from being involved in historic preservation in DC, and then comparing DC to other places, is the importance of "remedies."

When historic preservation efforts are successful it is because communities have already put into place legal processes for nominating, landmarking, and protecting buildings.

More often than not, activism not backed up by legal processes providing opportunities for protections fails.  See "Preservation advocacy may be more successful when companies are vulnerable to public pressure: Baltimore County vs. Fairfax County, Virginia vs. Robbinsdale, Minnesota," 2016).

Remedies are legal protections or requirements. In order to preserve buildings, you need legal protections. Without them (remedies) you have no recourse, no ability to reshape the process ("Without remedies there's nothing you can do: historic preservation in Chicago and DC," 2014; "The real historic preservation lesson from DC's Uptown Theater is about legal protections and remedies, not activism," 2017).

DC has a very strong local preservation law, making it a lot easier (but not perfect) to save buildings. But it applies only to areas that are designated as historic districts.

But while historically designated neighborhoods have strong protections and a process for residents to weigh in as a matter of course, neighborhoods that aren't historically designated have limited protections or "remedies" available to support neighborhood stabilization, when faced with neglect by building owners.

Addressing problems in a systematic manner.  Neighborhood improvement organizations need remedies in order to be able to address vacant properties and other nuisances (Development Handbook for Neighborhoods, Center for Neighborhoods, Minneapolis; Texas Problem Properties Toolkit, Community Development Clinic, U Texas Law School; How Can Municipalities Confront the Vacant Property Challenge? A Toolkit).

Below is a proposed set of remedies that need to be packaged together by local jurisdictions to facilitate neighborhood stabilization through the creation of local initiatives comparable to Pennsylvania's Elm Street program or city-wide programs like Baltimore's Healthy Neighborhoods program.

Start with data collection (and mapping).  Of course, groups need to start out by collecting data on their neighborhood, to identify problems and opportunities.

I've mentioned the Problem Property Audit.  More recently a software program and app called BuildingBlocks has been created to do this.

Make action plans.  And create neighborhood action plans based on survey data and public planning sessions identifying needs and opportunities too, not just problems.  People need hope.  But they also need to be able to help develop the agenda and program for the organization, especially if you want them to participate in carrying out.  That's necessary, because fully staff driven efforts are costly and can become disconnected from resident interests over time.

There are many models of ways to engage residents in planning and programming, as discussed in the four part series "Basic planning building blocks for "community" revitalization programs that most cities haven't packaged."

I also argue that as part of the creation of plans, consensus priorities should be set, and when "community benefits agreements" are triggered by development projects, required proffers should be directed towards those priorities.

Remedies

Neighborhood revitalization planning coordination overlay.  When I went to a conference in Cleveland in 2002, I learned that they have a zoning overlay, called a "Business Revitalization District Overlay", which provides an additional level of review for planning and building matters in commercial districts that the city targeted for improvement.  (A handful of other communities have similar processes.  But it's pretty rare.)

This was to address design and other issues, to ensure that property owners weren't operating at cross purposes in terms of the city's interest and program for improving the commercial district.

This kind of approach needs to be extended to weak market neighborhoods with community improvement programs operating in a manner comparable to the Main Street program for commercial districts, but for neighborhoods, such as the Pennsylvania Elm Street program.

WRT commercial district revitalization, I've described how early on in my involvement I was influenced by the creation of Design and Development Guidelines by the North Park Main Street program, when they created their program in the late 1990s.  Residentially-focused improvement programs need to do the same thing.

It's important to be clear about quality and how it matters in terms of sparking quality development on the part of other actors.

Housing (or Property) Courts.  Most regular courts look at housing matters as not particularly important, compared to dealing with major crimes.  Creating housing courts provides a focused way to address property matters with the seriousness they deserve.  I'd consider expanding this from "housing" to "property" because commercial property owners can be problematic as well.

Empowering nonprofits to act via receivership statutes.  Cities and counties may have receivership statutes that allow for government agencies, but not nonprofits, to address nuisance properties.  But typically, these processes are cumbersome and the agencies can be slow to act, allowing problems to fester or get much worse.

But some states, like Ohio and more recently Pennsylvania, have receivership statutes that allows nonprofit organizations to petition the court to take over a property to cure its nuisance.  Neighborhood associations and preservation organizations are motivated to do this to stabilize properties and/or neighborhoods.  To get receivership authority, the plaintiff has to provide a plan to cure the nuisance.  Once the nuisance is abated, the Housing Court can clear title and award the property to the nonprofit.

(Note that standing in the Ohio statute is not just afforded to nonprofits, but to local governments, residents living within 500 feet of the property, and tenants.)

Typically, properties are then sold to people who agree to live in the property, with easements to maintain quality.  Often the properties are sold at a loss--but the point is to stabilize the property and the neighborhood not to make money.

Eminent Domain.  Alternatively, eminent domain authority can be used to seize properties that are nuisances.  But this is more complicated, and sometimes can be politically fraught.  ED can be useful  when a property has multiple owners and is hard to determine ownership and clear title.

The Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative in Roxbury, Boston is noteworthy because it received ED authority to seize vacant properties in its neighborhood back in the 1980s and 1990s.

I am somewhat leery of this because there are as many "bad" community development corporations as there are good ones.  But it is a tool that needs to be considered, provided it is associated with checks and balances, which a property court could ensure ("Make eminent domain fair for all," Boston Globe), 2005).  From the article:

• Requiring, as Justice Anthony M. Kennedy suggested in his Kelo concurrence, that any exercise of eminent domain for economic development have a primarily public purpose rather than a merely incidental one.
• Requiring the government to demonstrate the public benefit through a full-scale financial analysis that could be challenged in court.
• Requiring that eminent domain not be used for a solely fiscal purpose and that it instead must be part of a comprehensive land use plan.
• Requiring that the affected neighborhood have adequate participation in the planning process, a right that would be backed up by state-provided technical assistance upon the neighborhood's request.
• Requiring that the state demonstrate good-faith dealing with the owners of the property targeted for taking prior to exercising the eminent domain power

A supportive form of Code Enforcement.  Code enforcement aims to make property owners maintain their buildings, with the threat of fines.

From "City demolishes nuisance house," Albany Democrat-Herald. Caption: A crew from Greg Payne Construction demolishes an abandoned house Monday behind Sunrise Park in Albany, Oregon. Photo: David Patton, Democrat-Herald

Properties beyond the pale get "condemnation notices" which usually leads to demolition, because the property owner lacks the cash or the property "isn't worth" fixing.  But a vacant lot is merely a different kind of nuisance.

According to the Joint Center for Housing Studies, the reason that most people don't "maintain their property"is lack of funds.  Code enforcement and escalating fines too frequently push people without much money into a negative spiral (The Power & Proximity of Code Enforcement: a Tool for Equitable Neighborhoods; "A.G. Schneiderman Announces Awards To 18 Cities And Towns For Tools To Address And Transform Problem Homes And Buildings," press release).

I argue for a different kind of process, using code enforcement as an engagement process, shifting from a punitive approach to one focused on helping the property owner to fix up the property.

Volunteer assistance: Amish barn raisings/Rebuilding Together/Habitat for Humanity/Apprentice training.  One way to do this is to create volunteer programs that provide assistance, alongside more traditional contracting, using the idea of "Amish barn raisings," where people in the community come together to help another family build a barn ("What happens at an Amish barn raising?," Amish America).

Rebuilding Together is a national program organized through local chapters that, using volunteers--both professionals and amateurs--to fix up houses.  Habitat for Humanity does something similar, but building houses for lower income families.

There is an educational film about Columbus, Ohio called "Flag Wars." A neighborhood close to Downtown, big old Victorian houses, that "the gays" started moving into to, and the tension this created with existing black residents.

Yes, some of the new residents called code enforcement on the legacy residents accentuating differences.

But to me, I wondered why instead didn't they create volunteer initiatives to help people fix their properties. These were monster properties that the average houseowner, let alone a poor household, would find challenging. They could have built social and community capital instead of diminishing it.

Before and after.

One initiative I wrote about years ago was "Paint Ypsilanti," which helped homeowners paint their properties, in an effort to spruce up the neighborhood.  From a now defunct website:

"Paint Ypsilanti is founded on the simple premise that we want to increase the vibrancy of our neighborhoods by providing assistance to residents unable to keep up financially and/or physically with the maintenance for their homes. After completing a successful pilot project in 2013, the program has plans to expand and hopes to provide paint, landscaping materials and labor for 20 project recipients in 2014."

Another option would be to work with local community colleges and their building trades training programs, and add "historic preservation" related training, with work in the field on houses in need of repair.

The Boston Globe has an article about initiatives in the Chinatown business and residential community to build community through clean ups and mural painting, as the community has languished as a result of the pandemic ("Chinatown cleans up, geting ready for its next act").  Although I argue organizations should be doing these kinds of activities on an ongoing basis anyway, to build neighborhood pride, community improvement, and volunteer involvement.

Ability to Sue Owners of Nuisance Properties.  Sometimes people just aren't reasonable and you need sticks to be able to get them to the table and to work with you.

This house at 1144 North Sixth Street has a history of code violations dating to 1998.

In Illinois, the Echo Park Neighborhood Association in Springfield has sued property owners to cure nuisances or to put the property in receivership as an alternative ("Neighborhood sues owners of abandoned house," Illinois Times).  But without the existence of a receivership statute already, it would be hard to be successful in court.

Revolving funds to support property maintenance and improvement.  Another issue is funding.  For example, historic preservation groups will organize funds to assist homeowners in maintaining their properties to historic standards, which can be more expensive.

-- Preservation Basics: Preservation Revolving Funds, National Trust for Historic Preservation

As funds are paid back, they are lent out again.  The same goes for houses that are rehabilitated and then resold.  The proceeds go back to the fund.

The City of Cleveland, leveraging the monies it had on deposit at local banks, working with the Cleveland Restoration Society, created a funding source for home improvement loans (Heritage Home Fund).  In the 28 years of the program, more than $76 million has been loaned out to almost 2,000 projects.

Community reinvestment requirements for banks can be another source of funds, along with local foundations and other sources.

Property Tax Surcharge on vacant properties.  DC and some other cities have a property tax surcharge assessed against vacant properties.  In DC, it's 5x the normal rate.  In terms of fostering building maintenance and improvement, this kind of stick only really works in strong real estate markets, because property values for maintained properties remain high.

In weak real estate markets, a surcharge at this rate will lead a property owner to demolish the property, thereby "curing the nuisance" and also significantly reducing property taxes simultaneously.

Property tax reductions on vacant properties.  By contrast, some places, such as Toronto have tax reduction programs for vacant properties.  In a strong market, this encourages aberrant behavior but in weak markets, it could encourage property maintenance instead of demolition.  Tax relief should only be awarded in return for public benefits, including abating nuisances.

Furthermore, in terms of tax reductions, property owners shouldn't be rewarded with lower taxes, if properties have become less productive through poor management and operation.  A case in point would be the management of the Doral Resort by the Trump Organization ("Trump's Doral resort loses property tax appeal," South Florida Sun-Sentinel; "Property appraiser reduces value of Trump's Miami hotel," Miami Herald).