Joe Schilling works with communities to assess and revitalize vacant properties

With the current surge in property foreclosures, thousands of vacant buildings are contributing to community decay in cities across the country. As director of Policy and Research for the National Vacant Properties Campaign (NVPC), a Washington D.C. area program he helped launch, Joe Schilling, professor, Urban Affairs and Planning, and associate director for the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech in the National Capital Region, is working directly with communities to assess vacant property and support their vacant property revitalization efforts.

Currently, as a visiting scholar for the Federal Reserve Banks of Cleveland, OH, Schilling is leading a study of how the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is implementing its $6 billion Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) and the roadblocks local officials are encountering in the process. During the summer, the study team visited NSP programs of the Northern Shenandoah Valley Regional Commission (Virginia), Fayette County Redevelopment Authority (Pennsylvania), Low Country Housing Trust (Charleston, SC) and just last month the team completed its last site visit in South Euclid and Bedford (Cuyahoga County), Ohio.

In South Euclid city officials are trying to use federal grants to buy homes, renovate them in an environmentally friendly way, and sell the property to jump start revitalization in the community. In a recent article, "Research team hears of hurdles faced in tapping $6 billion in housing aid," Schilling told The Plain Dealer, that "South Euclid is getting ahead of the game with the Green Neighborhood initiative." But, Schilling noted, the research team is hearing that "NSP is a difficult program to navigate."

Several days later, The Plain Dealer editorial, "HUD should take good advice and stop hindering recovery," chastised HUD "for impeding a housing recovery that appears to be picking up steam" and praised the study by stating: "Fortunately, representatives of the Federal Reserve banks in Cleveland and Richmond, VA, as well as the National Vacant Properties Campaign, a Washington D.C.-based program that provides information and technical assistance to communities on how to reclaim vacant properties, are trying to figure out how to make the Neighborhood Stabilization Program work better for cities and homeowners. . . The study should help cities better navigate the HUD labyrinth and, more importantly, provide federal policy-makers with strategic information on how to make neighborhood stabilization more effective and efficient, and make sure that the funds flow more quickly and accountably to communities the foreclosure crisis has hit hardest."

The study team's final report will be delivered to the Federal Reserve Banks by the end of the year with publication slated for early 2010. "We hope the insights and recommendations captured from our NSP field work will help shape the next rounds of federal housing policy," Schilling added.

For the past five years Schilling has led policy assessment teams on behalf of the NVPC in cities such as Buffalo, Dayton, Toledo, St. Louis, and in Youngstown/Mahoning County, Ohio. He is currently working with offices of the Local Initiative Support Corporation (LISC) in Kansas City and Philadelphia to bring together local officials and community leaders around a series of vacant property reforms. The goal of the NVPC, said Schilling, is to provide practitioners and policymakers with information resources, tools, and assistance to support their vacant property revitalization efforts. This includes individuals, advocates, agencies, developers, non-profits, and others.

Far from being confined to urban and industrial areas, abandoned property is a national phenomenon. Rapid growth on the fringes of many metropolitan regions has sucked development from urban cores and inner-ring suburbs, leaving abandoned buildings and vacant properties. Abandonment has taken many forms -- houses left behind because of suburban migration, industrial downsizing, and predatory lending practices; once vibrant downtowns turned into ghost towns, or local retail stores abandoned when large, regional centers moved in. No matter how the phenomenon manifests itself, the increasingly profound effects of vacant properties are the same: lower tax revenues, higher municipal costs, and serious environmental and public health consequences.

"Before communities can plot their comeback, they must address the scourge of vacant properties," said Schilling. "A number of cities like Baltimore, Flint, San Diego, and Louisville, are realizing the opportunity that these properties present in redefining their communities and are attacking the vacant property problem aggressively to prevent it from spreading."

In 2008, Schilling related some of his field experience in an article, "Greening the Rust Belt: A green infrastructure model for right sizing America's shrinking cities," which he coauthored with Jonathan Logan (UAP '07). The article appeared in the Journal of the American Planning Association.

Posted October 15, 2009