CRG Foundation has a dedicated team with a diverse range of expertise–from attorneys to construction and property management professionals–designed to tackle every aspect of nuisance abatement through health and safety receivership.
Our Mission
More than 15 million Americans live within half a block of a blighted or nuisance property. The CRG Foundation's mission is to eliminate such blight and restore communities through the powerful remedy of health and safety receivership. The Foundation provides technical expertise, skill, and experience to communities throughout the United States as they create their own health and safety receivership programs; and the Foundation approaches that mission with the passion of people who have devoted themselves to this work with focus and determination for more than twenty years.
Health and safety receivership is an underutilized but proven remedy that goes beyond traditional code enforcement to bring change to nuisance properties that have been dilapidated for years, even decades. It can be used to eradicate blight, slums, and abandoned and hoarder properties. Remediation of such properties decreases crime and increases neighborhood property values and community health.
The principals of the CRG Foundation began receivership work 21 years ago with the California Receivership Group. Over two decades and 250 receiverships, they've proven that health and safety receivership is a viable remedy for blighted and nuisance properties. The Foundation recognizes the potential for the receivership remedy to uplift communities across the nation. Twenty-five states have receivership statutes that are as comprehensive as California's, yet receivership remains severely underutilized. The principals of the Foundation are the most experienced health and safety receivers in the United States, and the Foundation is uniquely poised to share the knowledge they’ve gained with towns and cities across the country.
California Receivership Group and Receiver Mark Adams
Mark Adams, a public interest entrepreneur, pioneered the use of health and safety receivership as a remedy to abate nuisance conditions at slum properties, abandoned properties, and various types of dilapidated properties. In 1999, Adams became the first receiver ever appointed under the California Health and Safety Code to address a 66-unit apartment complex, after a young child tragically died from an illness brought on by the dangerous conditions on-site. Adams went on to establish California Receivership Group and, over the past two decades, has become the most experienced receiver operating in this field.
Mark is a magna cum laude graduate of Loyola Marymount University and of Georgetown University Law Center. He has worked in real estate finance most of his 35-year career-in the private sector (Callie Mae from 1983 to 1988 and Fannie Mae from 1992-1996) as well as the public sector (California Governor’s Office of Planning and Research 1978-1982). He served on and was a driving force behind, the City of Los Angeles Blue Ribbon Committee on Slum Housing from 1998-2000. He innovated the funding of super-priority receivership certificates and, over the last 20 years, has funded over $44 million in health and safety receivership financings.
Adams has led CRG as they’ve honed their approach to health and safety receivership work, gaining vast experience managing the financial, political, social, and economic intricacies that accompany this extraordinarily unique enforcement tool.
The CRG Foundation is a registered 501(C)(3) organization that has been awarded a platinum seal of transparency by Guidestar.
