LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The city of Louisville wants to make it easier to redevelop abandoned properties and turn them into affordable housing.

A pilot program to do just that will launch in December, allowing waive liens on 100 residential properties.

“It's part of our efforts to convert these 2,500 or more vacant and abandoned properties that we have around the city and convert them back into more productive uses,” Mayor Craig Greenberg, D-Louisville, said Tuesday.

This pilot is one of several ways the city is looking to increase its housing stock through its My Louisville Home initiative.

“The reality is, we're never going to get that money because these liens are never going to be paid off," Greenberg said. "The homes are stuck. And so as we're looking at creative ways for how we can take vacant and abandoned properties and get them back into more productive use, this was one idea that we had to just forgive the liens and have a new family have the opportunity to own that home.”

Laura Grabowski, the city’s housing and community development director, said in some cases, properties that seem abandoned are owned by someone who is not taking proper care of it. 

“Essentially, they're vacant, they're deteriorating and no owner is coming forward to take care of their property when they're getting cited by code enforcement," Grabowski said. "That's how those things start adding up." 

She said fines can be as high as several thousand dollars, making it nearly impossible to sell the property to someone else.

Depending on how the pilot goes, Grabowski said the program may become permanent in the future. 

“We don't have enough housing, and we’re not going to be able to build a way out of this," Grabowski said. "We need to find ways to take the property that we already have, rehab them and make them affordable and livable for this current generation." 

Greenberg's office also announced the formation of an abandoned properties team, which will identify and manage vacant buildings.