Terminology
A building or parcel that is unoccupied but still legally owned, maintained, or in transition.
What is a Vacant Property?
Job loss and deindustrialization. Lower incomes cause lower demand.
Empty homes and foreclosures. Linked to population loss & housing market pressures
What is Residential Vacancy?
Removes buildings that are structurally unsafe beyond feasible repair and eliminates major hazards.
What is Targeted Demolition?
Residents are more likely to indicate their neighborhood lacks social order if they live in an area with greater perceived levels of what?
What is Physical Disorder?
A property where the owner has stopped maintaining or taking responsibility for it.
Suburbanization and out-migration are paired with an aging housing stock.
What is Population Decline?
Empty storefronts and retail strips. Reflects economic decline, shifts to e-commerce
Can include trash removal, clearing overgrowth, basic landscaping, and community-managed green spaces
Remediating abandoned houses may help reduce the negative implications of physical disrepair on what important indicator of public safety?
What is Gun Violence?
Consists of both vacant land and abandoned structures.
Redlining, Racial Covenants, and Disinvestment
What is Historic Inequities?
Old factories and warehouses. Often brownfields and costly to remediate.
What is Industrial Vacancy?
Requires abandoned houses to have working doors/windows, keep lots clean, and vegetation controlled.
What is a Door and Window Ordinance?
This city enforced a doors and windows ordinance in 2011, requiring properties on blocks with at least 80% occupancy to have well-maintained windows and doors.
What is Philadelphia?
Tax delinquencies and decline of property maintenance
What is Owner Behavior?
Closed schools and hospitals. Politically and financially complex to reuse.
What is Institutional Vacancy?
Allows cities or public entities to take control of tax-delinquent or abandoned properties, and prevents properties from cycling through neglect and irresponsible ownership.
What is Land Banking Acquisition & Reuse?
This framework suggests there is an immediate signal of human intention or presence when a place is being well-maintained.