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Helping communities "unlock" the value of abandoned and underused properties, and transform blighted neighborhoods into vibrant and sustainable assets will be the focus of a new national organization being launched in January with the help of a $500,000 grant from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.

The organization, with offices in Flint and Washington, D.C., will provide federal, state and local officials and nonprofits with ideas, research, technical assistance, training and policy guidance on land use issues. That work will include tracking the costs, impacts and prevalence of vacant properties across the country; sharing strategies for stabilizing at-risk neighborhoods; and helping to develop policies that support a national response to the chronic property abandonment facing many cities.

The organization, which will be formally named by January 1, will also be supported by the Ford Foundation and other sources. It will be led by Daniel Kildee, who for nearly a decade has piloted successful land use reforms in Mott's home community of Genesee County, Michigan.

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