In an Op-ED for PublicCEO, Ryan Griffith, Attorney & Receiver at the Bay Area Receivership Group discusses his experience creating the Neighborhood Law Program (“NLP”) for Vallejo, CA in 2013.

Coming at a time when Vallejo had just filed municipal bankruptcy, blight was not a high priority and the bandwidth to address was non-existent.

NLP leveraged “recent law school grads” that “are young, scrappy, hungry and eager to find ways to build their resume” to address blight.

To view the Op-Ed, please click here.

To access the NLP program on Vallejo’s website, please click here.

Two recent initiatives have been introduced by the National League of Cities (NLC).

Landlord Engagement Lab Toolkit
Per NLC
“Engaging mom-and-pop landlords is key to longer-term eviction prevention efforts, housing stability, and supporting both vulnerable renters and landlords.

The “Landlord Engagement Toolkit” consists of a series of resources developed for city leaders interested in building or refining their strategies for engaging landlords. These resources offer important insight into key elements of a successful landlord engagement strategy.”

Key topics explored in each resource include:

• A step-by-step framework to build a mom-and-pop landlord engagement strategy
• Tips on how to develop systematic and standard methods to collect, share and update information on landlords to aid in relationship building, outreach, and developing more targeted programs and policies
• An overview of incentives and ideas for how to incentive landlords to engage in eviction prevention

To view the toolkit, please click here.

Housing Supply Accelerator
National League of Cities & the American Planning Association have partnered to create the “Housing Supply Accelerator”, a national campaign “to improve local capacity, identify critical solutions, and speed reforms that enable communities and developers to work together to produce, preserve and provide a diverse range of quality housing by realigning the efforts of public and private stakeholders in the housing sector to meet housing needs at the local level”

“This solutions-oriented campaign will provide model practices, ordinances and actionable resources to help local communities address their unique housing challenges. These efforts will be designed for immediate implementation by local leaders, planners and others working to combat the housing crisis.  ”

To view the NLC press release, please click here.

Recent article discusses a University of Pennsylvania – Wharton School June 2022 study on the “economic effects of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s Philadelphia LandCare program on thousands of homes in the city” that resulted in “increased property values for homes within 1,000 feet of those formerly unkempt lots”

To view the article, please click here.

To view the study, please click here.

Two recent articles discuss new strategies pertaining to fires, and the associated costs to local government, at vacant and abandoned properties.

Winnipeg (Canada)
Newly proposed legislation in Winnipeg (Canada) proposes that owners of vacant properties would be charged for fires that are likely caused by squatters (not from unrelated arson, natural disaster, or collision from a vehicle) who reside in improperly secured vacant buildings.

Clear intent is to incent owners to expeditiously return the properties to productive use.

To view an article and video segment from Winnipeg City News please click here.

Gloversville NY

Gloversville is now requiring the owners of buildings destroyed from fire damage to either reimburse the city the cost for demolishing the structures or turn their ownership over to the city.

For more information, please click here.

Update: April 4th
“Ohio Justices Toss US Bank ‘Takings’ Claims Against Counties”

In a recent report from Court News Ohio:
“A national bank seeking to avoid transfers of abandoned property to county land banks should have pursued other remedies available in state court before seeking to compel appropriation proceedings, the Supreme Court of Ohio ruled today.”

To view the article, please click here.

In a recent article, the Toledo Blade, discusses suit brought by U.S. Bank Trust in the Ohio Supreme Court to force in Lucas, Cuyahoga, and Summit counties and two other counties to compensate it for vacant and abandoned properties on which they foreclosed for unpaid taxes and then transferred into their land banks.

For more information, please click here.

After Billings MT voters approved a $7 million public safety levy in November 2021, the City has now utilized the funds to increase staffing of police, community service and code enforcement officers, along with implementing a new mobile response unit that now handles emergency calls for the fire department.

For more information, please click on the following link:
Billings boosts code enforcement with levy dollars to fight crime 

Update Feb 6
The bill was introduced as HB 0135
TO view the bill text and current status, please click here.

A new bill scheduled for introduction in the Wyoming Statehouse “would let communities issue property tax credits to people who buy and restore abandoned and nuisance buildings”.

A draft, “provided to the city of Casper” provides an example, if someone in Cheyenne “buys an abandoned home and spends $5,000 fixing it up. If that person could prove he spent that money on repairs, Cheyenne could grant him a property tax credit for up to $5,000.”

For more information, please click here.

Governor Kathy Hochul announced a statewide strategy to address New York’s housing crisis.

Included are;

• Proposed legislation to create a program that will require multi-family rental units that were built prior to 1980 to undergo a lead risk assessment every three years – if lead hazards are found, the landlord will be required to remediate the housing unit.
• Proposed legislation that will update the existing law that enables local governments to take ownership of certain dangerous abandoned properties.
• A targeted initiative, to finance home repairs in communities statewide that have been identified as having high levels of low-income homeowners of color and homeowner distress.
• Proposal for increased funding for the State’s Tenant Protection Unit, enabling them to open an additional satellite office. The increased capabilities of the Unit will be of particular benefit to manufactured home park residents and will improve access to grants and loans available to municipalities for farmworker housing.
• Requirement for all cities, towns, and villages to achieve new home creation targets on a three-year cycle.
  •  Localities will decide how to best meet their new home construction targets including;
    • Repurposing underutilized office parks and strip malls
    • Offering new incentives towards multifamily buildings, localities
    • Affordable units will be assigned extra weight in calculating localities’ progress toward their goals.
• $250 million Infrastructure Fund and $20 million Planning Fund
  • A new Housing Planning Office within New York State Homes and Community Renewal to provide municipalities with support and guidance.

To view the Press Release, please click here.