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Vacant property is blight on cities

Introduction

Vacant land is defined as the land where there are no buildings that could be redeveloped without treatment. These vacant properties have their own problems and issues, which needs to be solved. Urban areas are facing the greatest challenges while looking after these vacant properties (Greenstein, pp. 62-103). Camden and Philadelphia are the ones who are majorly facing challenges in managing the vacant properties. Federal government can play a vital role in progress of the vacant property. These lands can be used for different purposes, where the country can have benefits out of it. Strategic planning, reutilizing the vacant land, develop affordable housing, etc. are all few measures that can be taken for managing the vacant properties in the urban areas.

Discussion

There are many different challenges that got faced by Camden and Philadelphia in order to manage the vacant property. It is important to manage it properly, so that cities regulate vacant property because of the correlation between property vacancy and urban blight, including criminal activity and decreasing property values (Euchner, pp.102-165). The most common challenge that the Camden and Philadelphia has to face is to neglect or boarded up buildings, and to perform the commercial activities on the vacant property. The damage to Camden and Philadelphia are neighborhoods that resulted from people abandoning their homes and allowing lenders to foreclose is akin to what the current abandonment and foreclosure crisis will cause in other cities, in the years to come.

Most of the cities in this study targeted large portions of their NSP funds to neighborhoods that had exceptional numbers of foreclosed homes. Camden and Philadelphia, for example, devoted over $5-million of its $8-million NSP-1 allocation to an effort to purchase vacant foreclosed homes in its most impacted communities in “the Flats” - low-income, largely-minority neighborhoods that had the highest numbers of foreclosed homes (Jacoby, pp. 203-245). Dayton devoted most of its NSP-1 and -2 funding to four neighborhoods of need. In the case of Camden and Philadelphia, the targeting was to purchase foreclosed homes for repair and resale to low-income families. The cities used funds to clear unwanted homes since the city recognized that its housing stock was too large for the current population as well as to repair and resell better homes.

In other cities, the targeting reinforced ongoing revitalization efforts. In Camden, the city targeted NSP funds to communities surrounding several public housing ...