The National Vacant Properties Campaign was set up about five years ago "to provide everyone – individuals, advocates, agencies, developers, non-profits, and others – with information resources, tools, and assistance to support their vacant property revitalization efforts."

It is a terrific clearinghouse for information that is surprisingly hard to find. But it is so much more than that.

With the support of its partners and funders, NVPC has traveled to communities throughout the nation to meet with all parties concerned about vacant properties, from citizens to code enforcement officials to mayors to community development corporations and developers. From these meetings grow discussions, and from the discussions come ideas, and from the ideas NVPC's expert teams craft solutions.

And from the solutions come communities.

I'm privileged to be working with NVPC's technical assistance teams for my second year, helping to prepare action plans and strategies for cities and counties overwhelmed by potential property assets and big property problems: abandoned houses caught in limbo because of title problems, discount buildings picked up for a song on ebay and "flipped" by unethical outside investors, and neglected or underleased shopping areas that have seen better days.

(Haven't we all?)

This summer I have been helping the NVPC write and edit their a blueprint for reversing decades of depopulation and weakened market demand in Buffalo, New York.

Since I live in Washington, D.C., and just picked up a newspaper this morning that informed me my city has apparently grown by 31,000 people since (maybe) 1999, the biggest increase overall in 56 years, I can tell you: if it can happen here, it can happen anywhere.