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PENNSYLVANIA
Officials, Experts, and Lawmakers Team Up to Fight Blight
Recently, in a roundtable event on community blight in Har-
risburg, Pennsylvania, a town plagued with 447 cases of vacant or
abandoned homes, Sen. John DiSanto (R-Pennsylvania) met with
Sen. Tom McGarrigle (R-Delaware), Harrisburg Mayor Eric Pa-
penfuse, the Senate Majority Policy Committee, Banking, Housing,
and Urban Affairs and Housing Committee to discuss the blight
epidemic and brainstorm solutions and ways to incorporate them.
Robert Klein, Founder and Chairman of Community Blight
Solutions, was invited to address the group and discussed his
leadership role in advocating at the state and local level for policy
and legislative changes, including fast-track and no plywood
boarding legislation.
DiSanto opened the roundtable with remarks on how state
legislators are working with local communities to eliminate
problems associated with the blight that is ruining communities
and wasting taxpayer dollars.
Due to outdated foreclosure laws, vacant or abandoned
properties can sometimes stay empty for years, are vulnerable to
structural damages from weather and erosion, and can be ideal
breeding grounds for crime, drug use, and squatters. Often, they
will act as dilapidated kindling for fires. Fast-track foreclosures
allow mortgage servicers to obtain the property faster, rehabilitate
it, and put it back on the market before it becomes blight.
Although plywood boarding has been the industry standard
for decades, it has quickly developed a stigma of dilapidation and
vacancy. It offers abandoned properties little protection from the
elements and is easy to remove for those who wish to use the space
for suspect actions out of sight of the community it surrounds.
Polycarbonate boarding, a clear window and door system, is a
much more ideal alternative to prevent squatting.
e Harrisburg Roundtable was the first of several planned
roundtable events around the commonwealth.
