The City of St. Louis is awash in vacant property. Almost 6% of housing stock - 7,663 buildings - is vacant. Add 12,524 vacant lots and St. Louis is third nationally in vacant property. Roughly 75% of these vacancies are situated in the region's poorest neighborhoods. Increasingly, the links between vacant properties and deleterious effects for neighboring residents have been documented: vacant properties increase opportunities for crime, make residents feel less safe, and negatively impact the health of neighbors. Conversely, rehabilitation of vacant property presents opportunities for improving economic conditions in low-income neighborhoods through job creation and increasing affordable housing opportunities at a time when St. Louis is facing a critical housing shortage. Missouri law provides place-based nonprofit organizations, like neighborhood associations and community development corporations, a variety of legal tools to address problems associated with vacant nuisance property and to return abandoned parcels to productive use. As part of its strategic plan to improve the lives of low-income Missourians through direct and systemic legal advocacy, Legal Services created Neighborhood Advocacy in 2018 to bring vital legal resources to distressed neighborhoods to stabilize housing and return vacant property to productive use through targeted, place-based pro bono. This CLE will share how a combination of litigation and transactional lawyering, focused at the neighborhood level, can empower neighborhoods to reverse decades-old disinvestment trends and create neighborhoods of economic opportunity that better serve the needs of the low-income residents who live there.