Five years ago, the large borough of Wilkinsburg, which borders Pittsburgh to the east, compiled a list of 750 vacant properties to prioritize for demolition.
“We were having more vacant properties coming off the tax roll than we can do anything about,” recalls Tracy Evans, borough council member and head of the Wilkinsburg Community Development Corporation. “You have all these vacant houses: 'Why can't you do anything about them?'” residents asked her. “Well, it's not easy. I've had to tell people it is private property – the borough can't come in and do it. So people were on their own to grapple with those issues.”
After some struggle, Wilkinsburg decided to market Allegheny County's Vacant Property Recovery Program (VPRP), rather than trying for a solution on their own. VPRP began as a way to help people turn an abandoned lot next door into their own side yard. VPRP has since expanded into a way for 33 county municipalities to attract, assess and approve vacant lot takeover plans of all varieties while increasing the number and success of applicants in the process.
Wilkinsburg's VPRP website offers a link to the borough's vacant property inventory as well as VPRP basics. Most importantly, the site has success stories chronicling residents who have used VPRP in the recent past.
“Wilkinsburg has done a fantastic job in creating stories to encourage others to take advantage of the program,” says Cassandra Collinge, who is in charge of the county's VPRP as manager of consumer programs for the Redevelopment Authority of Allegheny County. Other county municipalities have encouraged more innovative uses of vacant lots, she allows, or have notified every resident about the program via letter, but the effects of Wilkinsburg's campaign is obvious, she says.
“You drive through the community, you can see people who have taken ownership of those lots,” Collinge says. “I would definitely say we've seen an increase” in applications, although current numbers are not available. It helps that Wilkinsburg also gives VPRP applicants 10 years of tax rebates and additional incentives.
The core requirements for VPRP eligibility include being up-to-date in real estate taxes in Allegheny County, finding a property that is vacant and tax delinquent, and completing the application, which necessitates a sound re-use plan and the financial means to implement it. Buyers are not responsible for the property's liens, but they do have to pay for a new assessment and the property's fair market value, under the state's eminent domain law, as well as VPRP acquisition costs (about $4,000) and closing costs ($200-$300).
Applicants may try for any vacant property – lots, homes, condominiums or commercial buildings. Successful VPRP applicants have done everything from clearing a lot and planting grass and rose bushes to rehabbing an existing building from roof to boiler.
“What happens to the property is an applicant-driven process,” Collinge says; the county doesn't prefer certain improvement plans. But each municipality must give its okay to VPRP applicants within its borders, which ensures each community's own plans are followed; in Wilkinsburg, the approval bodies are the Planning Commission and Council.
“If you're giving up your back taxes on the property, we want to have a say,” says Evans. Still, she adds, “I can't remember turning any down when it came to us.”
“All the boroughs understand that having someone who is responsible and interested in the property is a benefit to the borough,” Collinge says. “And we keep in good communication with the borough … to streamline efforts.”
With a grant from the Pittsburgh Partnership for Neighborhood Development to do its VPRP campaign, Wilkinsburg launched its advertising and outreach effort in April 2013. Previously, an average of about five Wilkinsburg applicants had been approved for VPRP help each year. Evans says the campaign aims to get more applicants and approvals for people to do affordable housing, rental properties, gardens, parking lots – pretty much anything that's better than a property's current conditions.
“For the borough and the school district, getting properties back on the tax roll is the main goal,” Evans says. “It's one less lot with raccoons or whatever is going on.”
Web clicks have “skyrocketed” for the Wilkinsburg VPRP site in its early months, she reports, although it is too early to tell if people are following up their interest with applications that are successful.
736 North
Evans credits Wilkinsburg's first VPRP user, Suzanne Nuss, for helping inspire the borough's move.
In 2006, Nuss began attending every community gathering she could find, seeking information on how to buy two units of an 8-condominium building at 736 North Street, where three were already vacant.
“I just yapped at a lot of different meetings,” Nuss recalls. “They were basically using '736 North' as a swear word: 'Not her again!'”
But, she says, “It really did get people going.”
One unit had more than 50 pages of liens for every bill imaginable: taxes, utilities, mortgage. And who owned it was anyone's guess; its mortgage had been bundled and re-sold so many times, thanks to the financial shenanigans that caused the recent economic downturn, that no one could figure it out.
Finally, Nuss talked to Cassandra Collinge in December 2007. “Everybody” worked hard to push it through Wilkinsburg's approval process, Nuss says, including officials of a local bank and of the Housing and Urban Development department. It took two years for the VPRP process to be completed.
Now, Nuss says, improvements to the Pittsburgh neighborhood of East Liberty, farther along Penn Avenue, will help bring residents to Wilkinsburg. “With Google moving in down the street, it could bring a ton of energy into the neighborhood,” she says. “You get enough geeks who like to work with their hands, they'd be happy to work their hearts out for Google then have a nice big property to work with in their spare time.”
Although she is ready to sell one unit, and has had potential renters and buyers, one did back out because of nearby high-profile crimes. “If you walk up the street you've still got a lot of boarded-up buildings,” Nuss says. “As beautiful physically as this building is, a lot of people are holding ground, waiting for the neighborhood to come up. On the other hand, I've seen more property being bought up in the last few years.”
Ripple Effect
A tour of Wilkinsburg's successful VPRP applicants shows the program has had an effect in a variety of Wilkinsburg neighborhoods.
In Hamnett Place, Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation used VPRP to restore seven vacant houses and resold them. The new Hamnett Place Community Garden, with 20 beds, a tool shed and rain barrels, includes Piano Place, a parklet with wooden benches and only the sound of birds, just blocks from the main drag of Penn Avenue.
In the same neighborhood is an urban farm called Urban Garden Dreams, one of the first local VPRP applicants, which now has a thriving business selling heirloom tomatoes. Although surrounded on two sides by boarded houses, it is a lovely, shade-dappled spot with multiple growing beds on concrete blocks and on the ground. Nearby is the Crescent Building, with apartments also being rehabbed by the Foundation; currently, there is a crane sticking through the roof. Behind it is a new Housing Resource Center, offering workshops for locals.
“That's really changed the whole character of the neighborhood,” Evans says. “People were talking about tearing down everything in the neighborhood but the neighbors said they didn't want that to happen.” She points to other VPRP successes, including two blocks of new affordable housing and an artist's studio in the old firehouse.
On Penn Avenue, Al Aqraa, owner of Al's Fish and Chicken, discovered the VPRP after attending borough safety committee meetings with complaints about the vacant home behind his restaurant. Today he is a successful VPRP applicant, with plans to tear the house down and create a 30-foot by 60-foot parking lot for his place. Today, the yard of the boarded home bears a legal notice for the property's second county hearing.
He didn't have to attend the first hearing and has no plans to attend the second. “The county will deal with the owner and all the legal stuff,” he says. “They said I should have the title to the property in early September, then I have six months to complete the project. And they asked me if six months is good enough for me.”
Concludes Aqraa: “The parking lot will hopefully increase my business, increase my revenue and increase the value of my building.” And the county and borough approval process “was very easy. They were actually kind of excited and very helpful and supportive.”
MARTY LEVINE is editor of sister publication Pop City's For Good section. Send feedback here.
Photo of Tracy Evans by Heather Mull
All other photographs by Martha Rial