Reclaiming blighted neighborhoods

‘A hot neighborhood’
In Cleveland, another Rust Belt city reeling from the number of foreclosures, local officials are striving to revitalize vacant land in an initiative called Re-imagining a More Sustainable Cleveland. The Ohio city had more than 18,000 vacant parcels at the start of 2009. For some empty parcels, the goal is to return it to residential or commercial use.

The improvements are more than an economic issue, said Freddy Collier, chief planner with the Cleveland Planning Commission. "It's a public health and social question as well."

Some communities also are turning to land banks to help manage the flood of idled property. Land banks are public authorities created to manage and develop tax-foreclosed property. And land banks can enable communities to pursue more strategic approaches to development.

"If you can pull together larger blocks of land, then you have a real asset to offer to developers," said Conan Smith, executive director of the Michigan Suburbs Alliance, an organizing group for inner-ring suburbs of Detroit.

In Philadelphia, two surveys done 10 years apart showed signs of marked progress in dealing with vacant houses in the Southwest Center City neighborhood. The follow-up survey in 2008 indicated that 90 percent of the once-vacant houses counted in the 1998 survey had been improved in some manner. Some structures were fully renovated with new residents while others were razed to create development-ready open space.

"This has become a hot neighborhood," said John Kromer, a senior consultant with the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania.

Kromer, a former Philadelphia housing director, credited a 10-year property tax abatement program and the formation of a downtown management organization as factors behind the rowhouse neighborhood's rebound.

The abatement offered tax relief on the increased market value of an improvement. For example, if a new house was built on a vacant lot, the property taxes owed for 10 years were based solely on the land.

The management group imposed an assessment on each property in the area, and the money aided in efforts to clean up the neighborhood and improve public safety, Kromer said.

Urban renewal
In Louisville, the local neighborhood association played a key role in the turnaround of the Phoenix Hill neighborhood. The group has matched up developers with available properties, and in the past was even more involved by buying up vacant or abandoned property and arranging for the development and sales.

"We have what we call a missing tooth policy," said Brown Kinloch, a member of the neighborhood association's board. "We go around and see which are the missing teeth on a block — the ones that bring down the value of the whole block — and try to work with those houses and find a creative solution."

Brown Kinloch, 53, bought his house for $7,120 a quarter century ago. He renovated the abandoned camelback-style home — featuring one story in the front and two in the back — and it's now valued at about $110,000.

That's not to say problems have vanished in the neighborhood. Poverty persists, and the neighborhood group would like to see more home ownership, though it doesn't discourage renters.

Crime is down, however, and perceptions of the neighborhood have changed for the better, he said.

Other signs of renewal have taken root — houses on the market usually sell quickly, he said, and the neighborhood has become a popular path for joggers.

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