Technical Assistance

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The Center for Community Progress is the leading national organization providing expert, high-impact technical assistance to end and prevent entrenched vacancy and property deterioration so that all people can live in safe, affordable, resilient, and equitable neighborhoods. If you’re ready to take a comprehensive approach to ending systemic vacancy in your community, we can help you get there.

What is Technical Assistance?

Technical assistance from Community Progress is a consultation service where we provide expert guidance and analysis to government officials and decision makers tailored to the needs of your community. Our team combines decades of legal, planning, and strategic expertise to assess the state of vacant property in your community, craft recommendations for policy and practice changes, and help you build long-term capacity so implementation succeeds.

Addressing vacancy cannot be solved overnight. What sets Community Progress apart is that our technical assistance team builds relationships to make sure local partners have the ongoing support they need to create long-term solutions to equitably prevent and reduce entrenched vacancy.

Our Services

The technical assistance team at Community Progress has expertise in:

  • comprehensive assessment and strategy development to support vacant property revitalization
  • property data collection and neighborhood market analysis
  • strategic code enforcement
  • delinquent property tax enforcement
  • land banks and land banking
  • vacant land maintenance and reuse strategies

We center racial equity in all we do, and design solutions to vacancy and deterioration within a framework of equitable community development so communities can realize goals like resiliency, healthy and affordable housing, and safe neighborhoods.

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Assess

We will conduct an initial assessment of your existing vacant, abandoned, and deteriorated property (VAD) conditions to help you understand the scope of the problem and which laws, strategies and practices are working—and which aren’t. Our services include:

  • Reviewing the legal framework, policies, programs, and capacity related to the systems that impact problem properties
  • Analyzing the state of VAD properties in your community
  • Calculating the true costs of vacant properties in your community
  • Assessing neighborhood stability through housing market, vacancy, and demographic
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Recommend

We will work hand in hand with you to craft customized recommendations for specific policy, practice, and strategy changes, including:

  • Topic-specific, comprehensive policy recommendations
  • Drafting ordinances and laws aimed at addressing VAD properties
  • Designing programs to help end and prevent entrenched vacancy, with your community’s specific needs in mind
  • Conducting strategic planning and helping develop action plans that result in improved resource allocation and greater impact
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Build Capacity

Our team provides the capacity building that is needed to see policy change through. These capacity-building services include:

  • Delivering locally based, topic-specific presentations, trainings, and customized resources
  • Coaching leaders who will be implementing new policies and practices
  • Producing top-tier publications that share best practices for tackling vacancy to inform the field

Our Impact

Get Help For Your Community

We provide customized expert guidance to local and state leaders across the country to address systemic vacant, abandoned, and deteriorated property issues. Send us a message to request help.