A previous post by Tyler Mulligan explained how local North Carolina governments can utilize land banks to address vacant, abandoned, and tax foreclosed properties in their community. Another post provided a case study of the Genesee County Land Bank Authority in Genesee County, Michigan. This post … Read more

In 2010, you might have read a post on our blog regarding tools available to local governments for dealing with foreclosures. The economic crisis resulted in a record number of foreclosures in North Carolina, leaving vacant properties in its wake. Four options available to local governments to tackl … Read more

In August 2000, The Durham Housing Authority (DHA) in partnership with The Community Builders (TCB) received a $35 million HOPE VI grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to revitalize Few Gardens, a public housing development located in Northeast Durham. The purpose of the … Read more

A court case pitting two unlikely opponents in the effort to provide better housing opportunities for low-income households has captured the attention of state housing finance agencies around the country. At issue in Inclusive Communities Project, Inc. v. Texas Department of Housing and Community Af … Read more

An emerging new source of supply for affordable senior housing is the adaptive reuse of historic buildings. These projects not only create much-needed new units of senior housing, but also offer communities a creative solution to their historic buildings, many of which are in dire need of renovation … Read more

Glenn Barnes is senior project director with the Environmental Finance Center based at the UNC School of Government. Increasingly, units of government are taking an interest in improving the energy efficiency of public buildings as well as residential and business units throughout the community.  Ef … Read more

Tyler Mulligan is a School of Government faculty member. As part of its comprehensive planning process, a town commissioned a housing study to determine whether its current and projected housing stock is adequate to meet the needs of its local residents and workforce. The results weren’t terribly su … Read more

2009 was a record year for foreclosures in North Carolina. Now it looks like 2010 is going to be worse. In the first five months of this year, North Carolina experienced 35% more foreclosure starts as compared to the same period in 2009. (2012 update: a GAO report on vacant homes and foreclosures ca … Read more

Jeff Hughes is the Director of the School of Government’s Environmental Finance Center and a School of Government Faculty Member A newly created local chapter of the affordable housing organization Habitat for Humanity begins planning the construction of their first group of homes in a fast growing … Read more

Imagine that you own a home, but not the land on which it sits. You’re a tenant on the land, subject to a 99-year ground lease. As a condition of the ground lease, you are permitted to sell your home only to a household earning less than the community’s median wage, and the ground lease sets a maxim … Read more