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Living Cities Fights Foreclosures

By Bendix Anderson

New York City—Living Cities, a consortium of foundations and financial institutions, handed out $3.8 million in grants in June to support local organizations as they develop and put into practice ideas to buy and rehab foreclosed homes in ways that preserve the character of their neighborhoods.

The grants are viewed as a prelude to the $3.9 billion in grants that will be provided to local governments by the federal Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 to fight foreclosures. By the time the federal money is deployed, Living Cities hopes that its money, invested in June, will have tested strategies to fight foreclosures, using mechanisms as diverse as New Markets Tax Credits, land trusts, and nonprofit real estate brokers.

The organization plans to create eight models for fighting foreclosures, each model tailored to the needs of a different type of market. The strategy for dealing with vacant properties in a market with very little demand for additional housing, like Detroit, must be different than the strategy applied to a city like Providence, R.I., where neighborhoods with many vacant properties exist near or even next to neighborhoods with high demand for housing.