The study, A different approach to boarded-up houses and devalued homes: Catalysts for community-led renewal in Black neighborhoods by Andre M. Perry and Manann Donoghoe, is featured in the latest edition of the Brookings Institution's website research section.
The term "hyper-vacancy" refers to a neighborhood with an excessively high rate of unoccupied homes. The Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance's "The Costs of Baltimore’s Vacant Housing" study found that in Baltimore about 15,000 residential properties in the city were unoccupied in 2022, and had been 7-8% of the housing stock for more than ten years. In 2010, older cities - e.g., Detroit, Baltimore, Cleveland - have had large population declines due to the loss of industrial jobs and high rates of hyper-vacancy. In Baltimore, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy found that 29.5% of all census tracts were hyper-vacant in 2010 compared to 7.5% in 1990.
Many vacancies in a neighborhood can lead to devaluation (when a property’s value is lower than its worth) and displacement, producing cycles of disinvestment. In a 2018 study, Brookings found that homes in predominantly Black neighborhoods in the US are valued 21% to 23% lower, on average, than similar homes in white neighborhoods with the same socioeconomic demographics.
When devaluation is coupled with hyper-vacancy, the damage to neighborhoods increases. A reduction in the quality of neighborhood amenities, flight, social decline, and less investment lower property prices, attracting investors, and paving the way for gentrification that displaces low-income residents. This was the case, for example, in the Middle East neighborhood of Baltimore, where legacy residents moved out when more affluent residents moved in. What could otherwise have been a beneficial process of renewal instead excluded the original residents from affordable housing in what had been their own neighborhood.
Revitalization is more difficult in these neighborhoods as investors find it harder to get proper financing. The assets of low-income and older residents who remain as their neighborhood continues to decline lose value. They are stranded in a blighted area.
The Brookings study cites a few nonprofit efforts across the US as examples of positive approaches to solving these problems:
(1) Parity, founded by former financial analyst Bree Jones and headquartered in West Baltimore, acquires and rehabilitates abandoned properties by the block. The process fundamentally upends the traditional approach to home purchasing. The organization, run and operated by Baltimore residents, is a direct response to the city’s high rates of gentrification.
(2) The Fitzgerald Revitalization Project, is another example. Operated by the City of Detroit, the project is transforming 400 publicly owned vacant land and buildings into community assets, including park lands and recreation areas. The core concept of the project is to work in partnership with residents and local stakeholders to guide redevelopment efforts. Importantly, the project emphasizes civic assets, like parks, neighborhood centers, and locally owned businesses. Members of the local community have an active role in choosing how to revitalize these neighborhoods by helping to decide where and what types of infrastructure and businesses to invest in.
(3) Other nonprofits, like The Works in Memphis, are pursuing a slightly different strategy to combat gentrification: leveraging existing community assets to create a more economically diverse and prosperous neighborhood. It uses a mix of tools (e.g., shared-equity) to subsidize the cost of home ownership in Klondike, a historic Black-majority neighborhood, to keep the neighborhood affordable.
