National Science Foundation funded project: Collaborative Proposal: Decision Models for Foreclosed Housing Acquisition and Redevelopment

The recent housing foreclosure crisis has had devastating impacts on individuals and their communities. To mitigate some of these impacts a number of community-based organizations are acquiring foreclosed properties in efforts to support neighborhood stabilization and revitalization. Examples of actions taken on these foreclosed properties include: land-banking, rehabilitation, demolition and re-sale or/re-rental. These actions have the potential to minimize blight, reduce unanticipated housing mobility, and provide affordable housing opportunities. However, the cost of pursuing any or all of these strategies to their fullest extent far exceeds the resources available to typical community-based organizations. In this research project, the PIs will develop decision support tools to assist community based organizations in identifying the subset of available foreclosed properties to acquired for the purposes of neighborhood stabilization and revitalization, determining which actions should be undertaken with respect to which properties, when the actions should be taken and to what degree? In terms of broader impacts, the policy/decision models developed will yield acquisition policies that are, relative to current operations and procedures: (1) more efficient, i.e. they make better use of organization resources and social subsidies, (2) more effective, i.e. they help organizations make more rapid progress towards social goals related to affordable housing and community development, and (3) more equitable, i.e. they ensure that stakeholder groups and the communities see the foreclosure acquisition process as more transparent, consistent and fair