New Updates on The Edge

Message from PD&R Leadership:
Happy New Year 2020
In the leadership message, Assistant Secretary for PD&R Seth D. Appleton reviews the office's accomplishments in 2019 and discusses plans for 2020. In the retrospective, Appleton highlights the progress that the office has made in the three priority areas of reducing regulatory barriers to affordable housing, disaster recovery, and engaging stakeholders to develop the Research Roadmap. Appleton also describes several of PD&R's notable 2019 publications, and discusses the research planned for the coming year.

Trending:
Addressing Vacant Properties with Land Conservancies
In October 2019, the Center for Community Progress held a webinar titled "Bringing Nature to Communities: The Role of Land Conservancies in Addressing Vacant Properties." The event featured two staff members from the Saginaw Basin Land Conservancy who discussed their organization's nontraditional decision to pursue urban work and highlighted the conservancy's role in remediating blighted and vacant properties in Saginaw, Michigan.

In Practice:
Preserving and Transforming a Longtime Affordable Housing Development in Salem, Oregon
Fairhaven Gardens is an 87-unit affordable apartment complex in Salem, Oregon. Originally built in 1969 as Viking Village, the aging development was facing the prospect of conversion into market-rate housing in the years leading up to 2017, when it was purchased by Community Development Partners (CDP). CDP undertook an extensive $17 million renovation of the complex's 10 buildings, landscaping, and infrastructure, and added amenities including a large community garden with a greenhouse and a clubhouse.

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