Attorney General Maura Healey recently announced the creation of the Neighborhood Renewal Division. This new division, has been created from the AG’s Abandoned Housing Initiative (AHI), a program created in 1995 to address abandoned properties. AHI currently works in 146 communities across the state, and between 2017 and 2019, helped improve more than 450 properties and recover more than $1 million in unpaid property taxes and municipal fees. The Neighborhood Renewal Division will continue the AHI receivership and grants programs and expand on AHI’s work to transform vacant properties into new homes for Massachusetts families.
“The Neighborhood Renewal Division, a new Division created from the Attorney General’s Abandoned Housing Initiative, uses the enforcement authority of the State Sanitary Code to turn abandoned residential properties around. Working in close partnership with cities and towns, the AG’s Office seeks out delinquent property owners and encourages them to voluntarily repair their properties and make them secure. If owners refuse, then the office’s attorneys will petition the relevant court to appoint a receiver to bring the property up to code.”
To view the Press Release in its entirety, please click here.
To access the new division’s website, please click here.
Rachel Bratt, a Senior Research Fellow at the Joint Center for Housing Studies and former visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, authored several Issue Briefs, offering insights about HUD’s regulations and procedures concerning mortgages near foreclosure/end-stage default following the Great Recession. They were written just before the coronavirus hit the US. With many people unable to make their mortgage payments due to COVID-19-related income loss, loan defaults and foreclosures will likely increase. This analysis may be of value as policymakers craft responses to this latest economic crisis.
To view the briefs, please click on links below.
To view the release discussing the release, please click here.
- Introduction and Summary of the Series
- The Role of HUD and the FHA: Conflicts in Mandate and Operations, Past and Present
- Outcomes of Foreclosure: Literature Review and Experiences in Lowell, Massachusetts
- HUD Regulations and Policies Concerning End-Stage Default
- HUD and Beyond: Legislation, Litigation, and Innovative Local Efforts to Reduce Foreclosures
Daniel Kuhlmann, assistant professor of community and regional planning at Iowa State University recently authored a paper, suggesting that demolishing abandoned houses may lead nearby property owners to better maintain their homes.
From the Abstract:
Does the presence of deteriorating housing affect nearby property owner’s decision to maintain their units? Does demolishing these distressed houses increase nearby homeowner’s maintenance investment? In this paper, I examine these questions by testing whether exposure to targeted demolitions of abandoned and distressed housing affects changes in the external condition of nearby houses. Using two waves of a property inventory in Cleveland, Ohio, my models suggest that, compared with a control group of houses located near vacant housing, proximity to demolitions decreases the likelihood that a property’s condition deteriorated between 2015 and 2018 and increases the likelihood that it improved.
To view the news release from Iowa State University please click here.
New York Assembly Bill 10553 proposes a ban on foreclosure actions for at least a year. New York foreclosure attorney Bruce J. Bergman presents several concerns from the perspective of mortgage servicers. Though he dismisses as insignificant the clause exempting vacant and abandoned properties, it is critical for local governments.
To view the article from the New York Law Journal, please click here.