Refreshing the Heart of the City: Vacant Building Receivership as a Tool for Neighborhood Revitalization and Community Empowerment

Abstract

Vacant Building Receivership is a building code enforcement tool that dispossesses and forecloses on owners of vacant buildings who are unwilling or unable to bring their derelict properties into basic conformity with basic building codes. This article examines vacant building receivership as a tool for ensuring the renovation of vacant buildings and as a means by which communities can develop increased confidence in and control of residential development in their neighborhoods. After discussing the need for a vacant house strategy tailored to support mid-level urban neighborhoods, the article, in its second section, will analyze how Baltimore's vacant building receivership remedy succeeds in situations that defy resolution by more conventional means. The third section studies the implications of vacant building receivership for empowerment of community organizations to coordinate and shape local housing investment, drawing upon examples from the experiences of a particular Baltimore urban neighborhood.

Keywords: urban revitalization, receivership, code enforcement, vacant properties