The Providence Urban Land Reform Initiative convened two advisory groups comprised of various city and neighborhood stakeholders to help direct both the project's identification of data needs as well as analysis of information. The development and study of indicators along with focus on a hot topic issue, the tax sale, laid the groundwork to show how analysis can be used to make recommendations and ultimately take action towards land reform.

Work of Subcommittees

The Data Group determined that both adminsitrative data from the city as well as a visual survey of property were necessary to provide a complete picture of at risk property throughout the city. It was important to ensure that the data available would be at scales usable to community groups. More information on the indicators used in the creation of the database can be found here. Further details about the citywide survey of unutilized and abandoned property are here.

It was the Policy Group's recommendation that the City's tax sale held great potential to be a catalyst in the city's early warning efforts. For this reason, their focus of analysis revolved around the tax sale process.

Presented in this section are project findings related to quantitative analysis and research shared and developed through meetings, interviews, and presentations.

Significant Findings

• The list of vacant and abandoned properties in Providence had not been extensively revisited since a targeted planning and policy effort in 1997.
• In the two broad classifications used for the citywide property survey --Unutilized and Suspected Abandoned properties, Unutilized (defined as ones without an obvious current use) comprised a set of 1,500 properties while Suspected Abandoned (refering to properties that are not only unutilized but also marked by physical disinvestment) numbered about 500.
• The count of Unutilized and Suspected Abandoned parcels skewed strongly toward lots without structures.
• Of the 1500 properties identified as unutilized in our survey, 25% had been advertised for tax sale in the past five years and 13% had been sold at tax sale during that time span. (In the 2004 tax sale, 1800 properties were advertised and 330 went to sale. These numbers are less than half what has been witnessed in recent years.)
• Survey results suggest the Providence housing market is presently active enough that few properties are completely discarded, with signs of reinvestment in most neighborhoods.
• Resident displacement can be a hazard of fast-occurring gentrification. In addition to the loss of affordable housing, individual hardships and neighborhood instability are amplified by the rise of predatory lending practices. There is general consenus that the impetus in Providence has shifted from initiating redevelopment to guiding how it will occur and who will be affected.