The National League of Cities has developed the Local Eviction Prevention Policy and Program Tool. This tool is an “interactive resource that aims to help elected officials, city staff, non-profits, service providers, researchers and others, better understand the local eviction prevention landscape in the US.”

The objective of the tool is assist communities in identifying approaches cities are taking to prevent evictions based on factors such as geography, city size, and stage of the eviction process that the policy or program intervenes.

For more information, please click here.

In our next installment of our Vlog series, Michael Halpern, president and founder of MuniReg LLC discusses a recent situation generating negative headlines (“Homeowner faces city fines after suspected DWI driver damages house”) and optics.

What lessons can be learned?

Following procedure is a given but what if it doesn’t make sense, or you are dealing with the exception to the rule?
For example, mailing citations to “last known address of the homeowner” doesn’t work if the last address is the subject vacant property!
Or when homeowners get “legalese” letters from banks warning of foreclosures and think they’ve already lost the property. Why cant the front of the envelope/top of the letter say “Stay in your property” etc?

The Citizens Research Council of Michigan (not-for-profit public affairs research organization, founded in 1916) recently released a report titled, “Coordinating the Authority and Resources to Remediate Blight”.

From the summary;

In a nutshell

• The term blight is used to describe properties that are marked by a demonstrated pattern of deterioration in physical, economic, or social conditions. Blight can exist in urban, suburban, and rural communities, but each community’s response to the problem will be different.
• Blight prevention and remediation generally is a public good that benefits the entire community and, especially, neighboring residences and businesses. Local governments are tasked with managing blight within their boundaries; their efforts are supported by state laws and programs, as well as federal funds and programs
• Possible solutions to more effective blight prevention and management include taking a more regional approach to anti-blight policies; greater collaboration among counties, local governments, and the private sector; increasing community buy-in and support; and, where appropriate, providing local governments with more diverse funding streams to provide the resources needed.

To view the summary and the full report, please click here.

Senate Bill 356 was introduced on February 8th, and was referred to the Housing Committee the following week.

According to the Legislative Counsel’s Digest;

The bill (titled “Housing: Code Enforcement Incentive Program: Community Code Enforcement Pilot Program.”) would increase the maximum grant under the (Community Code Enforcement Pilot) program from $450,000 to $2,000,000, and require the department to adjust that amount for inflation at least once every 5 years. The bill would require that the full-time code enforcement officer on the code enforcement team,…….be a certified code enforcement officer, as defined, and that the team additionally include at least one representative from a community-based organization.

The bill would revise the requirement for a grantee to provide and fund a city planner, health officer, or other specialist to specify that the grantee may provide and fund a building official.

The bill would also revise the authorized use of grant funds to include support for the engagement of community-based organizations. The bill would revise the requirement for the plan for cooperative and effective working relationships, …….to include cooperative and effective working relationships with local building officials and community-based organizations. The bill would also additionally require the grant proposal to include the number of certified code enforcement officers, as defined, employed by the applicant.

To view the Legislative Counsel’s Digest and current text etc., please click here.

Following up on a January Op-Ed (by Ryan Griffith Bay Area Receivership Group) discussing the benefits of receiverships, MuniReg’s President Michael Halpern discusses the value of a “VPRO”.

To view the Op-Ed, please click here.

Baltimore City Council is considering establishing fees for vacant property owners who receive 311 requests against their properties.

The ordinance would create a fee structure with increasing fines as more and more substantiated 311 service requests stack up.

For more information, please click here.

In what the Pittsburgh Gazette is calling an “unprecedented effort”, “dramatic move” and a “test case”, community groups are pushing in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court to step in under the state’s Abandoned and Blighted Property Conservatorship Act to manage dilapidated properties in the most devastated neighborhoods.

To view the article, please click here.

The New Orleans City Council voted to give the police chief authority to shut down nuisance businesses that could be contributing to the city’s crime crisis.

The “padlock law provides for a business to be shut down for up to two years and possibly face civil penalties if it has been declared a nuisance by a civil court judge, and padlocked by police. The statute is modeled after a similar law, put in place in Baltimore, by former New Orleans police chief Michael Harrison.

For more information on the New Orleans initiative, please click here.

For more information on the Baltimore initiative, please click here