Danny Bare has come to know Lynchburg’s old, dilapidated houses like the back of his hand: the way floors splinter, ceilings crumble and the center of the home settles, making the exterior walls slightly higher than the interior ones.
In most cases, those century-old houses are past the point of salvage and need to be gutted to their skeleton before they’re renovated, or be demolished entirely to make room for new construction. Bare always tries to salvage the original stairs, though. “They have character,” he said, and there’s something inspiring about saving the part of the house that helps people move up.
“I love the idea that we try to be the change we want to see,” said Bare, who’s worked as a contractor across Virginia and now flips houses in the Hill City. “So when I go into these neighborhoods and clean up, I just think about that first-time home owner that can move in after I’m done and create those generational wealth systems that help make these neighborhoods last.”
Bare is one of many with boots on the ground in Lynchburg’s oldest neighborhoods, working to rehabilitate aging buildings. Down the street at city hall and across the state in Richmond, others work on a different kind of construction — one that builds the policies that determine how derelict buildings are managed and what kind of support people like Bare receive.
It’s all part of a system that is gearing up for a productive 2026 in which “redevelopment is the name of the game,” said Tom Martin, Lynchburg’s director of community development. While the city’s derelict program has been formally in operation since 2022, it’s tapping into new tools now thanks to state legislation and capital improvement funding.
“Lynchburg is an older city, and our foundation is these older neighborhoods,” Martin said. “We’re trying to stabilize our foundation.”
Behind the scenes of Lynchburg’s derelict program
Lynchburg has 261 condemned buildings, Martin said, or buildings that have fallen into disrepair to the point of being unsafe.
Of those buildings, 94 have been deemed part of the city’s derelict program, Martin said. That means they’ve been identified as priorities for rehabilitation due to a combination of factors, such as where they are and how long ago they were condemned. As defined by city code, buildings must be a threat to public health and safety and vacant for more than a year to qualify as derelict.
Once a building is put on the derelict list, the owner has 90 days to submit a plan to the city about how they’re going to demolish or rehabilitate it, Martin said. If no plans have been submitted at the end of the 90-day period, the city begins charging a $500 penalty per month.
“And that typically gets people’s attention,” Martin said. “The fact of it is, the derelict program shows that the city is serious about this, and that it’s not acceptable for condemned buildings to stay the way they are. It starts movement, and that’s what we’re after.”
Before the derelict list formally got started in 2022, Martin said, “we would slap a condemnation sticker on a house, and that’s where it would stay.” The only way to hold property owners accountable was to take them to court, he added, which is a drawn-out process that can drain the city’s resources and staff’s time.
“Then days turn to months, months turn to years, seasons change, and these buildings just sit there and create issues,” Martin said. “They bring the neighborhoods down: They harbor trash, they harbor vagrants, they harbor mice.”
With the derelict program, the city can charge property owners the $500 penalty every month until they submit a plan to demolish or renovate the building — or until they’ve paid enough to offset the cost of the city demolishing the building for them. That’s usually about $30,000, Martin said, or five years’ worth of penalty payments.
Most property owners will sell their derelict building to someone willing to rehabilitate it rather than deal with the penalty or make plans on their own, Martin said. At that point, the new owner has the same 90-day window to submit construction plans before the penalty starts up again.
Since 2022, Martin said, the derelict program has led to 41 buildings being demolished and 15 renovations being completed. There are 32 renovations ongoing, he added. Most of the projects have been concentrated in Lynchburg’s older neighborhoods, where buildings are often a century old, including the historic “hills” such as College Hill, Diamond Hill and White Rock Hill.
What will change in 2026 and beyond, Martin said, is the support that the city can provide to those who take on the rehabilitation projects.
For fiscal year 2026, the city council approved $750,000 for the property toolkit — which includes the derelict program and other community development initiatives — in the city’s capital improvement program. The CIP is planned for five years, and it’s estimated that the property toolkit could receive a total of $4.35 million by the end of the 2030 fiscal year.
The funding gives the community development office the chance to develop initiatives to provide a carrot, not just a stick, in the derelict program. Possible incentives include permit reimbursements and assistance with deed research, Martin said, but his office is still in an early planning phase to determine how the incentives would work.
In 2026, Martin’s team also hopes to create a builders’ guild to support those undertaking rehabilitation projects and finalize a design book with pre-approved rehabilitation plans that can move through the permitting process quickly. Any incentive could go a long way in encouraging builders to turn abandoned infrastructure into housing that the city needs, he said.
“We are a very built city, so there’s not a ton of developable land open for new construction,” he said. “Is redevelopment the end-all-be-all final solution to the city’s housing needs? No, but every little bit helps. And we want to be a city of strong neighborhoods.”
A new tool from Richmond with statewide reach
Lynchburg’s derelict program is also entering 2026 with expanded powers thanks to legislation enacted in July.
Before July, only residential structures could be deemed part of the derelict program under state code, Martin said. That was a “big hindrance,” he said, because some of Lynchburg’s most visible condemned buildings are commercial ones in the downtown area.
Metchi Braun, assistant to the city manager, worked with Martin to draft a request to Lynchburg’s state representatives for a bill that would allow localities to impose the $500 penalty on owners of non-residential property.
The legislation, sponsored by Del. Wendell Walker, R-Lynchburg, passed in the 2025 General Assembly session. Now, any locality in Virginia can amend its ordinances to hold property owners accountable for the condition of condemned commercial buildings, Braun said.
“It feels like we’re on the leading edge,” Martin said. “It was our legislative agenda that got that commercial piece moved forward, and that has broad reaching ramifications for the entire state.”
Lynchburg’s contribution to statewide derelict building policy joins other developments from across Southwest and Southside Virginia, including Bristol’s lobbying for legislation that gives localities more control over who can buy blighted properties and Roanoke’s enactment of a special tax that increases property tax payments for blighted and derelict buildings.
A total of 22 commercial buildings are now condemned in Lynchburg, Martin said, and five of them have been assigned to the derelict list.
The owners of one of the properties — 709 Fifth St. — are planning to convert the downtown space into four residential units and one commercial unit, Martin said. The other commercial derelict properties are located on Main Street, Greene Street and Cabell Street.
Meet the builders with boots on the ground
For every property that is renovated or demolished, Martin said, another one passes its prime and takes its place. So, he said, it’s crucial to have a strong community of builders ready to take on one project after the next.
Bare, who estimates he’s fixed up about 30 homes since he moved to Lynchburg five years ago, said to keep the work coming.
“One of the challenges of revitalization is people look at safety records and come in with predisposed notions that these areas are unsafe because of the kinds of houses that are here,” he said. “But we turn out some nice homes that are beautiful and very livable, and I also meet some wonderful people that live in these neighborhoods, and so that story starts to change.”
Bare’s renovated houses sometimes become rentals and sometimes sell as single-family homes for about $250,000, he said. His goal is to keep houses affordable so first-time buyers have an opportunity to “get in on the ground floor and grow wealth,” he said. It’s a mission he shares with his wife, Davina Hunt Bare, who runs an educational program called DB Homes 4 Hope that helps people increase their credit score, learn about budgeting and prepare for owning a home.
Bare said he feels supported by city staff who always “grab the phone when they see it’s me calling” and appreciates how every inspector, planner and assessor “brings another set of eyes” to projects that are crucial for the community.
Walter Allen, who says he’s renovated more than 100 houses in the Lynchburg area over the past 40 years, agreed.
“I have to admit that, when I first started doing this, I dreaded the thought of having to deal with the bureaucracy of downtown. But now I can’t say enough good things about city staff,” he said. “These condemned properties are a big burden to everyone, so giving them attention is a win for everybody.”
Allen said his strategy has always been to “buy the worst houses I could find, the houses that no one else wanted.” It meant he always got a good deal, he said as he chuckled — and the level of disrepair never mattered to him, because he likes to strip houses down to their foundations and rebuild them, anyway.
“When I say rough shape, I mean houses that look like something that was bombed in Dresden,” he described. He can purchase those properties for about $30,000 in today’s market and sell them for up to $175,000 once they’re fixed, he said.
Allen has used city tools, such as real estate tax exemptions, to make smart investments over the years, he said.
While the derelict program looks good on paper, Allen said, it only works if it’s implemented correctly.
“Where it falters is when people go out there and put lipstick on a pig,” he said, referencing buildings that get a facelift but retain poor insulation, plumbing and electrical wiring.
Bare said he’s seen similar patterns and encourages renters and buyers to do their research and ask questions before committing to a property. Derelict properties are subject to standard city inspections and code compliance, he said, but it’s still smart to check all the details in the place you want to call home, especially when it has a long history of disrepair and repair.
“You end up with people that buy the house, and it’s not until they move in and they’re flushing the toilet while the dishwasher is going that they find out they have low water pressure,” he said.
Bare said flipping houses is a job that requires patience, as each project often involves new taps for water and sewer lines, extensive deed research and approvals, and long permitting processes. Allen said it’s a career that demands hard work: you have to be willing to become an expert in everything from painting to property management, stay alert for 16-hour build days and foster an intentional network of qualified real estate and construction professionals around yourself.
Even so, Allen said, there’s nothing like the satisfaction of building a safe home that will last for generations out of the very foundations of Lynchburg’s history.
“You’ve probably heard the expression, ‘If you find something you love, you’ll never work a day in your life,’” Allen, 77, said. “I’ve been fortunate enough that I’m one of those guys. I call myself retired, but I still work 40 hours a week, and I like what I do.”