Vacant Spaces into Vibrant places with Urban City Wide Development

The Challenge

Vacant and deteriorated properties harm neighbors and neighborhoods. They threaten public health and safety, keep residents from building wealth, and destabilize local government finances. Because of a legacy of inequitable policies and racist systems, low-income neighborhoods and communities of color bear an unfair share of the burden of vacant properties.

Our Vision and Mission

We envision a future where all people live in strong, healthy, just communities where widespread vacant, abandoned, and deteriorated properties no longer exist.

Our mission is to foster strong, equitable communities where vacant, abandoned, and deteriorated properties are transformed into assets for neighbors and neighborhoods.

Our Approach

We advocate for equitable policy change to help local, state, and federal leaders understand and reform the systems that perpetuate vacancy and deterioration. We educate community leaders who want to strengthen their neighborhoods. We deliver customized, expert guidance to help communities prevent and reduce entrenched vacancy. And, we uplift success and best practices from places practicing equitable, efficient, and effective community revitalization. 

By building relationships and networks that last, we inspire lasting policy, practice, and process change. Our approach ensures leaders are set up for success to implement and sustain comprehensive reforms to address vacant properties. 

Learn more about ways to address vacant properties in our resource centers: 

• Systemic Vacancy 
• Vacant Land Stewardship 
• Land Banks 
• Creative Placemaking 
• Strategic Code Enforcement 
• Delinquent Property Tax Enforcement 
• American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) 

Our Commitment to Equity

As leaders in our field, it is our responsibility to uncover and disrupt the systems that perpetuate inequity—in the communities we serve and within our organization. Systemic racism is a root cause of vacant, abandoned, deteriorated properties and an immense barrier to achieving our mission. Therefore, we must ingrain the pursuit of racial equity in our programs, partnerships, and people. We do this by embedding racial equity into our programming; dedicating time and resources toward implementing an annual Equity Action Plan; and providing racial equity training and education opportunities to staff and board.

Our Services

In all our work, we seek to ensure that communities have the policies, tools, and resources they need to transform vacant, abandoned, and deteriorated properties. Our state-of-the-art technical assistance has been provided to more than 300 communities in over 35 states and our educational programming has reached tens of thousands of individuals across the United States. We fulfill our mission via four interconnected service areas:

• Technical Assistance
• Leadership & Education
• Policy & Research
• National Land Bank Network

Our Team

We are former practitioners and policymakers who understand that today’s neighborhoods have been shaped by decades of unjust policies—and we are driven by the promise of safe, healthy, resilient, and inclusive neighborhoods that provide opportunity and dignity for all.

The expertise and passion of our staff is unmatched, and Community Progress is highly regarded as the nation’s leading resource for urban, suburban, and rural communities seeking to equitably address the full cycle of property revitalization.