After a couple of weeks traveling and seeing family, I got back to Albuquerque in late Nov and finished the month with more learning about how vacant and abandoned housing works.
I dug into an interesting read: the 2018 report from Albuquerque on vacant and abandoned houses. It's 50+ pages long, but only about 10 pages required to see the force's recommendations. Here are a few of points that stood out to me:
Check out the full report for more juicy details
In addition to working my way through the above report, I had a chance to join a meeting including participants from the city code enforcement, zoning, city council and the fire dept. It was helpful to discuss the problem and not only to hear, "Call 311". 311 is certainly a valid and useful form of reporting, but hammering the line with complaints about the same property is unlikely speed up the efforts. However, reporting unsafe situations and calls that result in the dispatch of city services may eventually put a property on the city's radar. It's a crowded radar screen so the question remains: "What can community members expect with respect to a plan for addressing vacant/abandoned and substandard properties". The fire dept has ADAPT program but I was told that's more useful for problematic multi-unit and commercial properties.
Additionally, city employees mentioned that the 311 system is planned for upgrade later this year and the new system will make it easier to track compliants and responses to compliants. I'll keep my eyes peeled.
In addition to hoping the city makes progress towards implementing more of the task force's recommendations, I remain interested to agitate in my own neighborhood. December will have time for a few more steps in that direction.
I'll use Dec (and probably part of Jan) to collect responses/data and formulate milestones for 2024 related to the recovery and restoration of abandoned homes in my neighborhood.