Will HANDS Help?

Foreclosures have hit some of our cities pretty hard. Foreclosures bring the neighborhood values down. But vacant and abandoned properties bring neighborhoods down even more. A non-profit organization HANDS - Housing And Neighborhood Development Services - is buying up vacant, foreclosed urban properties. Instead of letting our cities fall into blight, they are working to clear up titles for 47 properties in New Jersey. The goal is to turn these empty houses into homes. The Star Ledger discussed the project in an article titled Deeds in hand, nonprofit alliance targets neighborhoods hit hard by foreclosures. Let's take a look -

An alliance of nonprofit organizations has acquired 47 vacant and abandoned homes in the state in what is being touted as a pioneering bulk mortgage-purchase deal to reclaim New Jersey communities hard-hit by foreclosures.

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Now, HANDS, which stands for Housing And Neighborhood Development Services, is working with the investor-owners and creditors who have liens on the properties to clear the deeds, something that would allow community housing organizations to take title and find families to occupy them.

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About 14 of the 47 homes are destined to be sold at market price to sustain the rehab of the remaining homes, whose ownership will go to such "neighborhood guardians" as Unified Vailsburg Services Organization, or UVSO, and Episcopal Community Development, which in turn will deliver affordable housing to first-time buyers.

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The nonprofit, once it takes ownership, intends to bring in a contractor and pre-qualify the new homeowners to rejuvenate a neighborhood shaken by a foreclosure crisis.

The 47 properties are concentrated in Newark, East Orange, Irvington and Orange but also include single homes in such places as Roselle, Woodbridge and Perth Amboy.

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In Newark, with an estimated 900 bank-owned properties and 300 privately owned properties boarded up, the alliance's work is, as [Patrick Morrissy, executive director of HANDS Inc] said, a beginning.

We hope the program works. We always like to read about the inspirational work that people and groups are doing in our region. It is great that they are able to scoop up vacant properties before they deteriorate or are vandalized. It is also great that they, hopefully, can provide afford housing to families that can help build back up neighborhoods. And the fact that the group will prequalify buyers - hopefully that includes some mortgage counseling.

Meanwhile - according to city-data.com there are 8,759 vacant housing units in Newark. So the 1,200 foreclosed properties are about 14% of all the vacancies in the city. Wonder how those numbers compare with others...