Monessen PA is, essentially, giving vacant homes to anyone who is willing to repair them. And two officials overseeing the plan said “it is working.”

For more information please click on the following links.

Local coverage:  Vacant homes plan working, Monessen officials say

National Coverage/Wall Street Journal:  Rust Belt City’s Pitch for a Hot Housing Market: Free Homes

A new report from the Center for Community Progress titled, ““Land Banks and Community Land Trusts (CLT): Partnering to Provide Equitable Housing Opportunities Now and for Future Generations” discusses land banks and CLTs, promising models and examples of land bank and CLT partnerships from across the country, and what is needed to evolve and expand land bank and CLT partnerships.

For more information, please click here

The Center for Community Progress and the Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta and Cleveland released a new report titled “Tackling Vacancy and Abandonment: Strategies and Impacts after the Great Recession”, containing articles by national experts in the field of neighborhood revitalization.
Once again, another study that discusses “VPR’s” as a valuable tool in an overall blight mitigation strategy.
For more information, please click here.

The Task Force consisting of legislators, staff and community stakeholders was convened in June 2020 and has released their report.

Per Co-chair Matt Peter (County Legislature 5th District – D) “blight is both a county and a regional problem and says it must be addressed “with the eyes of equity.” The report contains a series of lengthy recommendations, which the panel is in the process of prioritizing.”

To view the County Legislature’s Press Release, please click here.

For local media coverage, please click here
To view the report, please click here.

City of Springfield, IL recently utilized Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative Fellow Megan Willis-Jackson to provide an analysis, and  recommendations to address vacant and dilapidated housing. Recommended changes included changes to;

On a particularly positive note, the report offers suggestions to transform reactive processes to proactive (i.e. Public Works should move from a reactive to proactive inspection process) along with opportunities to increase broad collaboration (i.e. Develop a toolkit for neighborhood associations detailing resources available to improve properties)

For more information, please click here

Recent article in the Wall Street Journal, discusses a July 2021 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, that “found a tight link between municipally funded house repairs and a drop in crime on those blocks with a city-funded overhauled home.”
“The results showed that blocks with a single house repair subsequently had a 21.9% reduction in crime compared with blocks with houses on the waiting list.”
And a quote from the lead author…..”A maintained house might lead to a reduction in stress and a boost in mental health, which lead to a “cascade of good things” she said. “Perhaps it’s easier not to get mad at a neighbor’s barking dog or to connect with neighbors if there’s no mold in the house causing a child’s asthma.”
To access the article, please click here.
To access the referenced study, please click here.

Pennsylvania once again is at the forefront in the fight against blight and with new proposed legislation shines the spotlight directly on code enforcement.
House Bill 1827, would give local governments the opportunity to apply for grants to launch new property maintenance code enforcement programs, hire inspectors for new programs, or increase staff to strengthen existing programs.
For more information please click here
To view the current status and language of the bill,  please click here.

California Governor Newsom signed SB 296 “Code enforcement officers: safety standards” into law.

“The Legislature finds and declares that code enforcement officers are disproportionately at risk for threat, assault, injury, and even homicide due to the nature of their obligations. “

This added Section 829.7 to the California Penal Code. The Legislature finds and declares “that code enforcement officers are disproportionately at risk for threat, assault, injury, and even homicide due to the nature of their obligations.”

“Each local jurisdiction that employs code enforcement officers shall develop code enforcement officer safety standards appropriate for the code enforcement officers employed in their jurisdiction”

To view the bill language, please click here.

Newly proposed legislation would require vacant property owners to file contact information with the county auditor’s office.

For more information, please click here.

The Jackson MS (recent recipient of 1 of 8 $100,000 “Love your Block” grant) Director of Planning and Development seeks to establish a “neighborhood academy”. The purpose of the academy would be “to provide homeowner associations with information about how to fight blight, deal with abandoned property and other issues, so it would make it easier for them to work with the city”.

For more information please click here.