Brian Lawrence: Blight is a wicked problem

Regarding the editorial “Addressing blight requires planning and action” (Feb. 7, TribLIVE): The roots of blight are nuanced, varied and complex. Systemic factors like abuse of the federal tax code and individual factors, like the death of a loved one, contribute to the problem. Compounding the issue, 40,000 fewer people call Westmoreland County home than in 1980.

Blight is not a simple, or even a complex, problem, but a wicked problem with many causes and many solutions.

While the roots of blight are complex, the impacts of it are clear — from poorer mental health outcomes to diminished home values and rising crime. Quality of life is drastically impacted for people who live in blighted neighborhoods, with no way out.

The funding provided to the Westmoreland County Redevelopment Authority through the American Rescue Plan Act aims to reduce the health impacts of hundreds of blighted, vacant or abandoned properties, tangentially reducing costs for public services and increasing tax bases in federally designated Qualified Census Tracts. Without this crucial funding, it would take over 30 years working at our current pace of demolition to address all the blight in the county (assuming, of course, no additional blight occurs in those 30 years).

The funding will help restore hope in neighborhoods that have seen their housing, recreational, educational and economic opportunities diminished over the decades. However, the land these buildings sit on will remain. That’s why we’re engaging with a consultant who will research and recommend redevelopment strategies that have been successful in similar communities. It will help communities shape and implement strategies for reactivating these disused, blighted, vacant and abandoned properties, stabilizing home values and creating an environment for new investment. Our goal is to create a redevelopment guidebook that can be adapted and customized to suit the needs of individual communities not just in the county, but across the entire region.

Planning has proven vital to addressing blight, which is why, in 2021, the redevelopment authority and land bank boards adopted their first joint strategic plan to eliminate blight and its influences throughout the county.

The most critical objective of this plan is to build local capacity in municipalities across the county through training and education. We’re also developing a regional code enforcement program to offer quality code enforcement services to communities that may not have the resources to provide these services on their own. In 2022, we developed and began beta testing a mobile and web application with several communities to integrate information sharing so that we can be proactive, rather than reactive, to patterns of blight.

While government and nonprofits can do exceptional work on this problem, we must enlist the help of qualified, reputable and community-minded developers. We’re holding multiple conversations with these types of developers to find shared purpose and processes that will accelerate much-needed investments in homes and buildings that aren’t yet ready for demolition.

For good or ill, we now live in a globalizing economy that allows capital to zoom around the planet faster than our built environment can adapt. While deindustrialization may have changed the landscapes of many of our communities, e-commerce and remote working hold the potential for a new wave of capital to be shifted. The redevelopment authority and land bank are working to build durable systems that respond to yesterday’s, today’s and tomorrow’s economic shifts.

Brian Lawrence is executive director of the Westmoreland County Redevelopment Authority & Land Bank.