Brockton initiative inspired state grant program

Mass Innovations, From The Beacon, January 2014

Well before the national mortgage foreclosure crisis came into view in 2008, Brockton was grappling with a problem: Many city homeowners were defaulting on their mortgages, but banks were not stepping in to rehabilitate the properties and get them back on the market.

Brockton’s efforts to address the problem eventually helped lead to a statewide grant program to help communities track down banks and other entities responsible for abandoned properties.

In 2004, the city formed the Brockton Mayor’s Task Force on Housing and Foreclosure, which included Brockton Redevelopment Authority Housing Director Robert Jenkins, Plymouth County Register of Deeds John Buckley, other local officials, and representatives from the Massachusetts Housing Partnership and the office of Congressman Stephen Lynch.

Around 2007, Jenkins said, the city “started to see a trend of banks just not foreclosing. … They had taken the property, but they hadn’t foreclosed.”

The Brockton task force worked to track down the banks and real estate management companies that were responsible for the properties. But the work proceeded slowly, due in large part to the city’s limited resources. Jenkins said it was taking up to two to three years for the task force to determine who owned a particular property.

But as foreclosures became more common in other cities and towns, Brockton’s efforts caught the attention of the attorney general’s office. Last spring, Attorney General Martha Coakley announced that $1 million in grants would be available to communities that were struggling with neglected or abandoned properties.

The Distressed Properties Identification and Revitalization grant program was consistent with what Brockton already was trying to do: make sure that banks would be held accountable for the properties they still owned.

The key step at the state level was the decision by the attorney general’s office to use money that Massachusetts received as part of a multi-state settlement related to unlawful foreclosure tactics. The $1 million that Massachusetts received through the settlement funded the grants for Brockton and 20 other cities and towns. The grants enable communities to hire a coordinator to oversee the effort to track down banks or other creditors responsible for abandoned properties.

In October, two months after the grants were awarded, Coakley spoke in Brockton against the backdrop of a renovated single-family home that had previously been abandoned. In her remarks, which are posted online, Coakley said that the idea for the DPIR program emerged from a conversation she had with Buckley, the county’s register of deeds.

“It was John’s idea to do exactly what you see behind us,” Coakley said, gesturing toward the newly renovated home.

Other recipients of individual or regional DPIR grants are Adams, Ashburnham, Athol, Barnstable, Chicopee, Fall River, Fitchburg, Greenfield, Haverhill, Holyoke, Leominster, Lowell, Lynn, Methuen, Montague, New Bedford, North Adams, Orange, Springfield and Winchendon.

For more information, contact Robert Jenkins at (508) 586-3887.