Vacancy Collaborative Launch

Our city has a serious vacant property challenge, one that affects all of us on personal, local, and regional levels. The reasons for vacancies are complex and solutions require a collaborative approach among local government, neighborhood leaders, nonprofit organizations, and other stakeholders.

This workshop marks the launch of the Vacancy Collaborative, a growing coalition of local government officials, nonprofit organizations, neighborhood residents, and other stakeholders that are focused on addressing the vacancy challenge in our city.  Workshop participants will learn more about the purpose of the Vacancy Collaborative and meet the new coordinator, help identify priorities for the Vacancy Collaborative, work to connect existing vacancy efforts together and find out how to become more involved.  In addition, workshop participants will learn about, and provide feedback on, the Vacant Properties Portal, a new interactive web-based tool that enables us to use data to address the vacancy challenge in powerful ways. 

 This workshop is an outgrowth of prior vacancy summits (October 2016 and February 2017) as well as the recent April 2018 event at which workshop participants learned about a vacancy resource guide (available at risestl.org/vacancy-guide) and the Neighborhood Vacancy Initiative, which provides legal help to neighborhoods combating vacancy.  The Vacant Properties Portal was created in response to a request from Mayor Krewson at the Build4STL: Visualizing Vacant Housing Hackathon (September 2017) for creative technical solutions to the City’s vacancy challenge.  Funding to support the Vacancy Collaborative was provided, in part, by the Missouri Foundation for Health.  

Schedule:

8:30AM-9:00 AM:  Workshop Check-in (coffee available)

9:00AM-12:00 PM:  Workshop

BIG THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS!