Providence Urban Land Reform

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Use and Abandonment Survey Design

The design of our Utilization and Abandonment survey had two broad classifications --Unutilized and Suspected Abandoned --each containing illustrative examples of qualifying conditions. The survey was completed in approximately 100 driving hours with two people on most trips.

UNUTILIZED - without an obvious current use
Properties Without Building(s)	Properties With Building(s)
Yards fenced on all sides and with no clear association to adjacent lots	Buildings with doors that are neatly boarded or otherwise permanently secured
Paved parking lots with permanent blockades	Unoccupied commercial or industrial buildings that are for sale or lease
Dirt lots used for haphazard parking	Commercial buildings that remain shuttered during standard business hours
"Sliver lots," small or awkward shaped lots not serving an explicit purpose
Wooded lots appropriate for infill development
Cleared demolition sites, with or without foundation intact

SUSPECTED ABANDONED - both unutilized and marked by physical disinvestment
Properties Without Building(s)	Properties With Building(s)
Lots with severe overgrowth of weeds and bushes	Buildings with large sections of collapse or structural burn damage
Lots with accumulated litter, yard waste, or demolition waste	Unoccupied buildings with poorly secured doors or windows

An Abandonment Typology

Contrary to certain literature on the topic, our survey and data exploration suggests that fiscal (taxes, mortgage), physical (upkeep), and literal (actually leaving) abandonment seldom seem to occur in a neat linear sequence. We found that most "abandonment" situations fit into one or more of the following three types:

1) Chronic non-utilization, regardless of physical condition;

2) Physical neglect, regardless of utilization status; or

3) Fiscal neglect, regardless of utilization status.

To some extent, our survey detected both the first and second abandonment types. The first type refers to a property that is not serving a recognized purpose for an occupant, an adjacent property holder, or the community.

The second abandonment type, physical neglect, is characterized by structural or environmental conditions that range from a public nuisance to a serious health and safety risk to occupants. Our survey was of course unable to record physical problems not in view of the street. The third type of abandonment, fiscal neglect, surfaces with advertisement of a tax lien or with foreclosure on a mortgage. Fiscal abandonment is self-resolving, through lien foreclosure, mortgagee's sale, or traditional sale by a compelled owner. Whether these forms of resolution are satisfactory depends upon whose interests are in mind.

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