MAIN INITIATIVE
Clearing the path to revitalize Memphis neighborhoods
Promoting collaborative efforts to develop practical and sustainable resolutions to blighted properties and to the systems that lead to widespread neglect, vacancy, and abandonment of real estate.
About Us
In January of 2022, The Works, Inc merged with Neighborhood Preservation, Inc., expanding its services to include policy advocacy, the Strategic Code Enforcement Management Academy, the Blight Elimination Steering Team.
Our Vision
Our mission is to promote collaborative efforts to develop practical and sustainable resolutions to blighted properties and to the systems that lead to widespread neglect, vacancy, and abandonment of real estate.
OUR PARTNERSHIPS
SCEMA
Strategic Code Enforcement Management Academy
The Strategic Code Enforcement Management Academy or SCEMA provides the rare opportunity for peer learning among code enforcement programs from diverse cities, counties, and towns that want to enhance, expand or share their transformations to strategic code enforcement.
OUR POLICY WORK
Receivorship for Blighted Properties
The Works, Inc. assists Tennessee Receivership Group with receiverships in Shelby County. In this position, attorneys focus on code enforcement and anti-blight interventions and coordinate public and private-sector neighborhood maintenance and community development efforts. This work deploys compatible blight-fighting tools, strategies, and initiatives across different departments and agencies, and in concert with nonprofit, civic, and business partners.
Before
After
REBUILD RESTORE RENEW
In The Absence Documentary
In The Absence' is a nine part docu-series exploring key housing issues in Memphis, Tennessee. The story is told by 80(+) people over a three year period.
The city of Memphis has been ravaged by disinvestment, deficit culture and outdated systems. Generational wealth was stripped away after the 2009 foreclosure crisis and in its wake a mass migration towards affordable housing stressed the marketplace. This opened up an opportunity for out of town investors and slumlords to operate unimpeded by oversight. Cash strapped and over stretched the city had to get smart about how to tackle some of our nation's deepest questions around social equality. Leaning on code enforcement and environmental court, establishing a law clinic, creating public-private partnerships and collaborating with indigenous leaders throughout the city created a pathway towards uprighting our neighborhoods and turning deficits into assets.
REBUILD RESTORE RENEW
Moving Klondike Forward
In January 2020, The Klondike Smokey City CDC and its partners, The Works, Inc. and Neighborhood Preservation, Inc., worked together on the historic transfer of properties from the Shelby County Land Bank.
This was the first step in what many hope is a path to stabilization for the Klondike neighborhood in North Memphis. Leveraging these properties, the partners have established a collective goal of growing Klondike from 600 households to more than 1,200 households by 2042, through the Moving Klondike Forward Initiative.
The key tenets of this strategic initiative are: no involuntary displacement of current residents, preserving permanent affordability and building resident equity. In addition to the parcels acquired from the Shelby County Land Bank, the project team has acquired more than 250 properties, consisting of vacant lots, existing housing and some commercial sites.
These parcels, along with the parcels from the Shelby County Land Bank will serve as the foundation for the new and renovated housing planned under the Moving Klondike Forward Initiative.
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