Nobody's Home

In the series finale, we examine how to get people who aren't directly affected by vacant housing to care about finding a solution. How do you focus policymakers on a problem with so many different moving parts?

If housing blight costs money, renovating vacant housing and creating new affordable housing also costs money. Where might that investment come from? An examination of community land trusts and the Community Reinvestment Act.

The crisis in affordable housing has its roots in the high cost of building entry-level single-family homes. But why does it cost so much to build a house? And what did previous generations do to build affordable housing?

Small towns across the country struggle with vacant housing as much as cities, even though some of those places have plenty of jobs. Geography and a declining population lead rural communities to make hard choices that often play themselves out in unexpected ways. 

People need jobs to afford housing, but how can cities attract more jobs to places that need them the most? And what happens to a neighborhood when drug activity and crime move in after blue-collar jobs move out?

The 2008 financial crisis nearly destroyed the global economy, and was driven by an asset bubble in what has been among the most secure financial products: the home mortgage. Can policymakers expand homeownership without endangering the financial system? Should they?

Poverty. Crime. Vacant housing isn't just about empty homes and abandoned lots. It's a problem that is blighting communities across the United States. Nowhere is it more apparent, however, than Baltimore. With 16,000 vacant properties and another 14,000 vacant lots, some residents think they have a solution. But the challenge facing them and other blighted areas is immense.

The idea of urban homesteading was supposed to shore up flagging cities in the 1970's and 1980's, but why did it fall short? An examination of how home values are decided, and how the financial system intersects with people's attitudes.

What does it take to combat vacancy in neighborhoods where it has taken hold? A look into one neighborhood in Baltimore that has bucked the trend, and the approach that city planners use to reinvest in blighted communities.

What happens when neighborhood revitalization is too successful? Some cities have managed to eliminate their vacant housing problems. But now many of them face acute shortages of affordable housing, which can lead to nefarious results for renters.