Blight

by Leigh Graham

Published January 17, 2009 @ 09:00AM PT

The NY Times reported Thursday on NYC's effort to fight blight from concentrated foreclosures in Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island.  Similar efforts exist all over the country, and range from government's directly keeping up the properties - cutting the grass, making sure windows aren't broken or that squatters have not occupied the units - to municipalities partnering with non-profit organizations to manage the upkeep and oversight.   In periods like this, there is tremendous opportunity for anti-poverty and affordable housing activists.

NYC will partner with a local non-profit to care for and resell the homes.

the city will not take ownership of the properties, but instead will subsidize their rehabilitation through a third party, a nonprofit group called the Restored Homes Housing Development Fund Corporation. The group will purchase a majority of the 115 properties, hold title to the properties during the rehabilitation and then sell them at prices affordable to families making roughly $80,000 to $90,000 a year.

This is often a more successful model, given the contracted community-based organizations are often closer to the ground and the general economic turmoil that foreclosures indicate. In Miami, one housing activist has taken more aggressive action:

Rameau is an activist who has been executing a bailout plan of his own around Miami's empty streets: He is helping homeless people illegally move into foreclosed homes.

Cities have a direct, tangible interest in keeping up foreclosed properties, as they tend to attract squatters  and crime, which in turn can drive down property values; property tax revenues drop off immediately and in the long term if houses go unsold. I heard Rameau interviewed on NPR and the response from Miami officials was hysterical - sort of a "don't ask, don't tell" reaction to his program, given how bad Miami's foreclosure problem is and how limited their resources are to fight it.  Whatever it takes, seemed to be the sentiment.

Indeed.  Revealed in the above links is the variation in neighborhoods that are weighed down by high foreclosure rates - ranging from low-income neighborhoods where poor residents and households of color often were victims of predatory lending, to suburban neighborhoods that suffered from too much speculative development and home buying.  Advocates nationwide have the opportunity to partner with pragmatic or forward-thinking governments around foreclosure response programs.  For some non-profits, like these groups in Brooklyn in the 1970s, acquiring blighted or vacant properties from cities can translate into the capital needed to build strong, activist organizations over the long term.