By ANN RICHARDS
In April 2010, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland signed a bill that will allow more than 40 counties to create government-funded land banks to deal with the state’s excess of tax-foreclosed and abandoned properties. Modeled on legislation created a decade earlier in Michigan, and a land-banking model first developed in Genesee County, Michigan, the new law not only will help urban and suburban counties acquire foreclosed property, but also renovate, demolish, maintain or redevelop those properties in accordance with community needs.
“
Cuyahoga County’s land bank – which was the test case for this legislation – is a direct replica of our
Genesee County model, right down to the economics. It represents the next big model for our work,” said Dan Kildee, former county treasurer, who with Emory University Law School professor Frank Alexander, founded the Center for Community Progress (CCP), a new nonprofit organization designed to share some of the valuable lessons learned in Michigan with cities across the country.
 A A co-founder of CCP, Amy Hovey will oversee technical assistance to communities dealing with abandoned properties. |
“A lot of the expertise we’ve accumulated is a result of research first tried in Michigan,” said Amy Hovey, the center’s chief operating officer, who is responsible for providing on-the-ground assistance and planning to distressed communities that are interested in using land banking to deal with abandoned and blighted properties.
A former program director with the Michigan office of the
Local Initiative Support Corporation (LISC), Hovey was instrumental in pulling together the public, private and nonprofit partnerships needed to assist the
Genesee County Land Bank in maintaining, selling or redeveloping the more than 1,000 residential, commercial and industrial properties over which it assumed ownership as Michigan’s first land bank. Michigan now has a system of 32 land banks, working in diverse markets.
“Land banks are an important model to share because they foster intergovernmental cooperation and link for-profit and nonprofit developers into the redevelopment process,” said Hovey.
The center will use a “tag team” approach to assist cities that demonstrate the political will and capacity to change the way they deal with land use.
“We do an assessment of a community before we make the decision to work there,” she continued. “Generally, Dan or Frank is the first to meet with a community. Dan has a tremendous ability to build public will for property tax foreclosure reform and is an excellent advocate for revamping state legislation. Frank’s team can assist states in re-writing their legislation and local ordinances and code enforcement procedures. My team is responsible for mapping out the process that will help communities use the new laws. We do the detailed hand-holding.”
Recently, the
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) designated the center as a national technical assistance provider. Under this arrangement, a key task of the center’s capacity-building staff will be helping communities across the country to access and use an anticipated $6 billion being made available through the first and second phases of HUD’s
Neighborhood Stabilization Program.
Hovey’s team also will continue to coordinate two national conferences each year, including the
Michigan Land Bank Conference, and is working with HUD to develop a library of online resources, including a “special toolbox for Michigan,” she said.
While a great deal of policy work is happening in Michigan, not every innovation comes from within the state, says Hovey.
“One of the advantages that come from working in other states is that we’ve discovered a number of effective practices, particularly in the area of code enforcement and property registration, that we can share with other states, including Michigan.
“We don’t want to be another think tank,” said Kildee of the center. “That’s why we want to make sure that thought coming from the field informs the field.”