ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the case for recognizing strategic code compliance and enforcement as the essential approach to sustaining neighborhoods against current destabilizing forces in the housing market and for a future of more resilient residential habitats. It explains that improved housing and neighborhood code compliance and enforcement are essential for urban neighborhoods' recovery and resilience. The chapter describes weaknesses and inadequacies of traditional policing policies and programs for maintaining residential dwellings and neighborhoods in safe, healthy, and secure conditions. It also describes how the devastating impact of the last 20 years of abuse to the housing and mortgage markets culminated in a crisis laying waste to whole neighborhoods and communities. The chapter identifies how local reformers armed with comprehensive data on real property transactions and conditions are responding to the housing crisis. It offers examples of data driven strategic code compliance enforcement as practiced in real, on-the-ground situations.
