Reclaiming blighted neighborhoods

updated 4:39 p.m. ET June 24, 2009

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - David Brown Kinloch could have lived elsewhere, but he chose to move into an abandoned home in a distressed Louisville neighborhood that others were leaving in droves.

In the 25 years since, Brown Kinloch has seen the Phoenix Hill neighborhood transformed from unsightly rows of vacant homes where crime flourished into a model of urban renewal. Under the stewardship of an active neighborhood association, new homes sprung up on weed-infested lots and boarded up houses were renovated. A small park and a communal vegetable garden offer green space.

"We were told that you couldn't build new housing inside the old city of Louisville," said Brown Kinloch, a renewable energy developer. "We proved that not only could you do it, if you made them affordable ... they'd sell right away. And they did."

Grassroots strategies to reclaim distressed neighborhoods are taking hold in cities across the country, including Cleveland, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Detroit. Fighting to reclaim neighborhoods blighted by blocks of decaying and neglected vacant homes, community groups and governments are working together to buy up lots, tear down buildings, create parks and court business to make neighborhoods safer and more welcoming.

But it's an uphill battle.

More than 1.2 million residential properties went into foreclosure in 2008, according to an estimate by Alan Mallach, a nonresident senior fellow with the Brookings Institution. The surge has spun off a vast inventory of bank-owned properties. The combination has caused housing prices to nosedive and can be a contributor to more crime and lower tax revenues.

The National Vacant Properties Campaign, funded by private and government grants, has been part of the fight. The group offers guidance to help cities, counties and states reclaim vacant properties.

Millions of vacant properties
It estimates the number of chronically vacant properties is in the millions. And the short-term outlook for a drop in vacant lands is bleak with millions more homes expected to go into foreclosure in coming years. Even in Louisville, several thousand abandoned structures or vacant lots dot some neighborhoods.

"There are just too many forces working in the system for anybody to expect a turnaround in the rate of foreclosures ... anytime soon," Mallach said at a recent conference in Louisville.

Still, there are many local success stories.

In Pittsburgh, the demolition budget has more than doubled for the purpose of razing condemned blights. It's a big task in a city with about 6,000 vacant buildings along with some 24,000 vacant lots. About 1,400 structures have been condemned, with more added daily.

One initiative gaining a foothold is called Green Up Pittsburgh that converts vacant properties into green space. The city offers horticultural consultants for soil testing and provides funding for initial plantings. A team of city public works employees helps maintain the property along with a corps of volunteers.

So far, more than 100 abandoned weed-filled lots have been turned into urban farms, community gardens and the like, with hundreds more projects planned. More than a patchwork approach, the initiative is seen as a larger strategy to improve neighborhoods being dragged down by a rash of abandoned lots with no prospects for development.

"It's one thing to change one corner, but if you can actually create a green corridor and a green pathway throughout the entire neighborhood, the impact is much greater," said Kim Graziani, the city's director of neighborhood initiatives.

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