As part of the Institute’s Vacant Property Research Network, Senior Fellow Joe Schilling participated as part of the national faculty for a workshop on strategic code enforcement hosted by the Center of Community Progress and the International Municipal Lawyer’s Association. On September 10th over 200 local government attorneys and practitioners spent the day examining the legal and policy foundations of classic and cutting edge code enforcement practices (e.g., administrative citations, criminal prosecutions, and civil actions) and how communities, such as Baltimore and Memphis, are strategically deploying their code enforcement actions by leveraging data and eevelop9ing cross departmental working groups that take into account the impact and influence CE can have on neighborhood revitalization outcomes. Schilling teamed with longtime colleague and friend Deputy Housing Commissioner for the City of Baltimore Michael Braverman to discuss regulatory strategies, such as Vacant Property Registration Ordinances and Baltimore’s cutting edge Vacants to Value initiative. Schilling’s work on code enforcement will continue throughout the upcoming year as last week the Wean Foundation and the Youngstown Foundation awarded the Institute grants to assess and revamp the Code Enforcement processes for the city of Youngstown. That work will kick off this fall and continue through the spring of 2015.
