Vacant Building Ordinances—A New Guide for Municipalities

To help the many Chicago-region communities grappling with myriad problems posed by vacant and abandoned buildings as well as new foreclosure filings, BPI and the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus have released a new publication, Vacant Building Ordinances: Strategies for Confronting Vacant Property Challenges.

Municipalities report that a Vacant Building Ordinance (VBO) that requires owners to register and take care of their vacant and abandoned properties is an effective way to address vacant property problems. With more than 100 Illinois home rule and non-home rule communities having enacted VBOs, the publication draws on a wealth of on-the-ground experience from municipal officials and staff about what makes an effective program.

The BPI-Metropolitan Mayors Caucus report discusses the principal features of VBOs and offers practical implementation and enforcement strategies. It features some of the most important lessons practitioners have learned and highlights the practices they identify as critical

to their success. The report is supplemented with online appendices that provide examples of statutory language, detailed information about resources for identifying responsible parties, and a checklist for pursuing various types of municipal liens related to property maintenance.

Our new report builds on an earlier publication we released in 2010, How Can Municipalities Confront the Vacant Property Challenge? A Toolkit, which highlighted key strategies communities across the nation were using successfully to respond to the challenges of vacant properties.