Long-struggling Richmond, California is tackling neighborhood blight in an innovative way.
Richmond’s leaders are teaming up with a community non-profit to buy and renovate nearly 200 “zombie” houses, as they are called, and sell them to families in need.
The properties have been empty for years after owners who couldn’t afford them walked away and banks never fully foreclosed.
But the abandoned residences are magnets for squatters and an eyesore for neighbors.
“They’re huge problems,” said Joshua Genser with the Richmond Community Foundation. “They attract squatters, they attract drug dealers, [and] they attract rats and other vermin. [They] just look ugly and bring property values down.”
In response, Richmond’s officials have teamed up with a nonprofit and Mechanics Bank to use social impact bonds to buy the properties, fix them up and then sell them to families in need.