TV on the Playdio by Myles
* coming update—answering the question of “what is going on here?”
Aside from being eyesores, public nuisances, symbolizing, and causing neighborhood blight, vacant houses more and more signify the dissolution of America’s backbone. Additionally, homeless ranks grow in cities big and small, and yet, more and more houses go equally unfilled.
Institutional assessments must be made of our documentation, processes, and turnover of abandoned property, foreclosed or otherwise. Forgotten Providence is attempt to record the problems plaguing our neighborhoods, and to a larger extent, provide context for possible policy changes surrounding code enforcement, taxation, sanctions, seizure, removal, and ownership transfers of houses neighbors wish to see revitalized or removed.
Through the examination of vacant and abandoned housing by means of photographic documentation and assimilation of all accessible, public data, Forgotten Providence aims to play a role into providing context for this growing problem, and a voice for the possible solutions.
An up-to-date, on-going survey of the decimation of these addresses must take place, and a city whole—government, non-profit, for-profit developers, neighbors, homeowners, and aspiring homeowners—must collectively plan a larger strategy than currently possible by housing, data, and municipal agencies that, largely, do not talk to each other.
On top of 10% unemployment (and rising), Providence, Rhode Island, Mayor David Cicilline estimates 750 homes are vacant and boarded up across the city. Other studies suggest the number is closer to 1200 homes, approximately four percent of the city’s residential housing stock. And the numbers are expected to rise.
Outside of these abandonded homes, many more houses are in danger or in various stages of disrepair, and the 2007, 2008, and 2009 increases of foreclosures are rapidly providing more vacant, gutted, rotting, and stripped structures across the city of Providence. As the recent wave of new foreclosures is just coming through the courts, the summer of 2009 should see an upwards of 1000 vacant residential homes across the city, if not there already.
Especially with the numbers of abandoned houses rising, no state, city, or private agency is aware of the exact numbers of forgotten and rotting homes. This is part of the problem in finding solutions; filling in this gap in data is included in the scope Forgotten Providence.
For comparison, studies suggest around 23% and 8% of all housing stock is vacant across Detroit, MI, and Cleveland, OH, respectively. The vacant, central heart of those two cities are examples of what other once-industrial cities, like Providence, do not want to become.
And though we look outside to other cities as warnings to what can happen if the two problems of vacant housing and rising unemployment are not treated effectively, the solutions which might work in other municipalities may not be Providence’s solutions, and vise-versa. The goal of examining the current abandonded housing crisis in Providence is to prevent further, rot, reverse the trend in forgotten homes, and turn neighborhoods decimated by blight into once again proud areas of home and commerce.
Vacant houses are bigger than foreclosures. Vacant houses, while possibly tied to foreclosures, are not always a product of such. Non-simply, the combination of absentee or out of town owners, lumbering banks, conglomerated property investors, and dated tax and assessment records play a big part in letting too much of our the city’s housing stock fall through the cracks.
Forgotten Providence is taken upon by neighbors who see the side effects of vacant houses everyday. No matter how weary, they, at the very least, have not forgotten.
Forgotten Providence
- A documentation of decay of a city’s homes and neighborhoods
- A photographic essay in the use of building, structures, land, and environment
- An account of homes and residences, long abandoned, and long forgotten
- An attempt to fix this problem
- As taken upon by the few, and open to all
contact: forgottenprovidence@gmail.com
Learn more in the wiki.