SitemapVacant and abandoned properties are a familiar part of the
American landscape, from the boarded row house in North
Philadelphia to the empty factory in Detroit to the collapsing
farmhouse in rural Kansas.
These structures can devastate
the neighborhood and block, undermine the neighbors’ quality
of life, and diminish the value of nearby properties. They also
cause severe fiscal damage to local governments, reducing
local tax revenues while costing cities millions for policing,
cleaning vacant lots, and demolishing derelict buildings. Most vacant houses are well maintained, but many
are a problem. Thousands sit empty for years, abandoned
by their owners, deteriorating to the point
where they cannot be reused without major rehabilitation.
Many ultimately are demolished, leaving
vacant lots in their place.
These vacant properties can also become community
assets. Thousands of vacant commercial
and industrial buildings have been restored and
turned into apartments, lofts, and condominiums. In
Baltimore, neighborhoods have been revived and old
houses have been put back to use. In Cleveland, vacant
lots have found new life as community gardens,
miniparks, and farms.
Vacancies skyrocketed with the Great Recession,
as the number of unoccupied dwellings rose from
9.5 to 12 million nationally between 2005 and 2010.
The number has declined since then, but it is still
far higher than it was prior to 2005. “Other vacant”
units—a term used by the census to define units
that are neither on the market, held for future occupancy,
nor used only seasonally—have risen from
3.7 million in 2005 to 5.8 million in 2016. Although
there is no national tally for vacant lots, the 2015
Gary Parcel Survey found 25,000 of them in that city, or
more than 40 percent of the city’s parcels. According
to Detroit Future City, Detroit had more than 120,000
vacant lots in 2017.
Vacancy and abandonment are not only urban problems.
Rural areas and small towns have a vacancy rate
nearly double that of metropolitan areas; rural vacancy
problems are particularly severe in many parts of Appalachia,
the rural South, and the Great Plains states.
The scale and trajectory of vacancy vary widely from
city to city. Sunbelt cities like Phoenix or Miami saw a
surge in vacancies with the foreclosure crisis and the
recession, but since the recovery, vacancies have come
back down to pre-crisis levels. In cities with robust
market demand, such as Seattle and Washington, DC,
the long-term vacancy trend is clearly downward. To read the full report from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and The Center for Community Progress, click here.