New England Community Development
Issue 1 (2012) 
What Do the Neighbors Think? Assessing the Community Impact of Neighborhood Stabilization Efforts
In the wake of the mortgage crisis, neighborhood stabilization efforts have been launched to allay some of the "secondary effects of the mortgage crisis—the economic and social impacts on properties, neighborhoods, and communities." One example of this kind of effort is the federally funded Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP), which provided several million dollars to the City of Boston in order to acquire, rehabilitate, and resell abandoned, foreclosed homes in high-foreclosure neighborhoods. The author discusses preliminary findings from ongoing research exploring the effect of foreclosure and NSP intervention on neighborhood social stability.
New Ideas for Old REOs: A Disposition Framework for Marketing REOs for Rental Properties
The unprecedented accumulation of foreclosed properties in recent years has presented a challenge to communities, banks, and policymakers. This article outlines a potential disposition framework for government-sponsored and private enterprises to identify which foreclosed properties would be most appropriate for rental and which would remain most appropriate for homeownership. This disposition framework is then applied to the existing stock of foreclosed properties in Massachusetts, and the authors explore the possible utility of this analytic technique as a policy tool.