You arrive at the house filled with dread. The front yard is a sea of tall, dry, yellow, blades of grass that sway back and forth in the breeze, threatening to ignite the wooden boards across the windows. You shutter and continue up the porch. Each step emits a creak that hints at imminent collapse. The house is unoccupied, but sometimes, the ... READ MORE+
From the decisions they make to how effectively they perform their duties,code enforcement officers have a highly visible role in the community.Most noticeably, they control the battle of the blight. Methods vary, but Code Enforcement’s approach to blight management can essentially be broken into two categories: reactive and proactive. GovPilot ... READ MORE+
With mosquito season right around the corner and a cure for the Zika virus a decade away, by expert estimates, local governments across the United States are devising mosquito control strategies. Predictably, many of these strategies incorporate the publicization of information regarding Zika transmission and symptoms as well as the spraying of ... READ MORE+
Last week’s Earth Day-themed blog post touched upon the concept of the community garden: a public plot of land maintained by a city’s residents. In recent decades, the prevalence of property blight has reignited interest in this age-old concept. Vegetation has sprouted in place of asphalt in United States cities from Detroit, Michigan to ... READ MORE+
It’s the subject of a classic 1976 documentary, the setting of an HBO movie starring Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore and the inspiration for a Tony award winning Broadway musical.Grey Gardens has been viewed from a variety of perspectives, but never as an allegory for the reversibility of property blight, until now. A property synonymous with ... READ MORE+
Today’s proliferation of vacant properties is attributed to the 2008 housing bubble collapse, but property abandonment has plagued United States districts long before the predatory lending practices of the early aughts. The story of New York’s South Bronx in the 1970s illustrates the ramifications of property blight on a community as well as the ... READ MORE+
Weather-beaten porches buckled into overgrown, yellow grass. Profanities sprayed across boarded windows. To those just passing through a blighted district, vacant commercial and residential properties are an eyesore. For those living in a blighted district, these vacant structures are death traps. READ MORE+
In Baltimore, a group of 27 city-owned properties on the west side of downtown, known as the Superblock have stood vacant for years in the midst of litigation and delay. The properties occupy a prime location close to downtown, the University of Maryland (Baltimore) and the city’s arts district – yet problems with developers have left the nearly ... READ MORE+
According to The Detroit News, since 2005, more than one third of Detroit properties have been foreclosed on because of mortgage defaults or unpaid taxes – almost 140,000 properties. When those homes aren’t reoccupied, they often end up on the city’s blight list, a list that has already 84,000 properties on it. READ MORE+
The City of Paterson, NJ is partnering with GovPilot's, a government management software provider, Geographic Information System (GIS) to support a special tax lien sale on Feb. 4, 2016. READ MORE+
