Tag Archives: vacant buildings

Foreclosure Echo

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David Reiss CC BY-NC-SA

Linda Fisher recently posted a pdf of The Foreclosure Echo: How the Hardest Hit Have Been Left out of the Economic Recovery, a book she co-authored with Judith Fox. It came out before the pandemic, so you might have missed it. The abstract reads,

This book tells the story of the foreclosure crisis from a new perspective – that of ordinary people who experienced it. This angle has not been thoroughly communicated before now. The authors are legal academics who have worked for decades defending low- to moderate-income people from foreclosure and challenging predatory lending practices. They have a wealth of experience representing people whose American Dream was shattered when they were threatened with losing their homes. Using actual experiences – often examined through a legal lens – supplemented by economic, social science and legal research, The Foreclosure Echo explains how people experienced the crisis and how their lenders and public institutions let them down. The book also details the lingering effects of the crisis – such as vacant and abandoned buildings – and how these effects have magnified inequality. Finally, the book suggests reforms that could help avoid another crisis.

It is a timely read, and it resonates with some of the challenges homeowners will face as the consequences of the pandemic work themselves out in the housing market with the expiration of the various foreclosure moratoria that were in effect during the earlier stages of the pandemic.

Don’t Abandon Hope

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According to Dante, Hell’s entrance has a sign that reads, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”  As communities face the foreclosure crisis and see their population shrink, they need to come up with a plan to deal with this new reality. I have previously wrote about Housing Abandonment and NYC’s Response and am pretty confident that abandoning hope, and just letting the cards fall where they may is the worst path for a community to take.

I was quoted in a story in Joliet, Illinois’ Herald-Sun, Joliet Grapples with Empty Building Syndrome, that reads in part:

David Reiss, a law professor who teaches community development, property and real estate courses at Brooklyn Law School in New York, agrees. He has written about and studied empty residential spaces, but he’s also watched firsthand how New York state got aggressive about empty residential buildings in the 1980s by acquiring them and selling them to private or nonprofit developers.

“It just paid off in spades,” he said.

Reiss said demolishing empty buildings that can’t be used is better than having “derelict, hulking structures in the middle of the community,” he said. “Better to have open space than crumbling structures. You don’t want these ghosts or boogeymen to haunt a community.”

It doesn’t make sense to throw money into something that won’t pay off, he said.

“So I certainly think a community led by its mayor and city council really wants to have an intelligent plan,” he said. “It’s important to have momentum.”

The worst thing to do is to ignore the problem or not see it, he warned.

“You really need the civil leaders to believe in the community and plan for its rebirth,” he said. “If you don’t have that, you’re kind of on a life raft at sea.”