A recent Mother Jones Article quotes VPRN’s Founder, Joseph Schilling:
“Every vacant property has a story story behind it,” says Joseph Schilling, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute who has devoted the majority of his career to studying how communities reclaim vacant properties. “What is the owner’s story? What is the neighborhood story? What are the market factors that have caused it to become vacant? It’s critical to unlock that in order to figure out how best to stabilize the property or neighborhood.”