Vacant Properties: RegionWide Challenges, Creating Equitable Outcomes

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Vacant Properties Region-Wide Challenges,
Creating Equitable Outcomes

• Panel Discussion
• Forum on Vacant Properties
• October 24th 2005
• john a. powell
• Williams Chair in Civil Rights Civil Liberties,
  Moritz College of Law
• Director, Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race
  and Ethnicity
• The Ohio State University
• http//www.kirwaninstitute.org/

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Outline and Focus

• Cycle of abandonment
• Spatial racism and regional dynamics
• Kirwan Institutes work around the vacancy issue
• Lessons learned from this experience
• How race and regionalism fit into the vacancy
  challenge

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Regional Context ofVacant Property

• Regions with concentrations of vacant properties
  must recognize vacant property is not a cause but
  a symptom of more significant equity issues.
• Sprawl and inner city disinvestment
• Concentrated vacant property areas generally
  contain the households least equipped to address
  the cumulative effects of vacancy on the
  character of the social and physical environment
  in their neighborhoods.

Vacant Property
Sprawl
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Vacant Properties A Moving Target?

• Vacancy is a challenge which is moving beyond its
  traditional urban boundaries and into the
  suburbs.
• To reduce the disparate and negative impacts of
  vacant properties on communities and economies a
  regional approach, including policy responses and
  implementation tools are needed.

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Ohios Metropolitan Regions Sprawl without Growth

• Ohio is developing rapidly without the population
  growth to justify the rapid expansion.
• This creates too much surplus housing and further
  exacerbates the vacancy problem.

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Urban Land Demand and Supply Mismatch
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Kirwans Work Around the Vacant Property Issue
Lessons Learned

• The Kirwan Institutes involvement around issues
  of vacancy have focused on the Detroit
  metropolitan region.
• Working with M.O.S.E.S., a faith based community
  organizing group, we have provided support and
  research to promote establishment of a land bank
  in Detroit

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Disinvestment and Abandonment in Detroit

• Population loss has resulted in a surge of vacant
  and abandoned properties
• Almost 10 of Detroits housing stock was vacant
  in the 2000 Census, compared to only 5 in the
  surrounding suburbs
• As a result the City of Detroit contains the
  largest number of tax foreclosed properties and
  vacant properties in the State
• Approximately 40,000 tax reverted parcels, 90,000
  vacant parcels city wide

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Lessons Learned Policy Responses to Vacant
Properties

• Connect vacant property challenges to
  comprehensive planning
• Address the need to reduce vacant property
  through regional planning
• Look at from a toolbox approach
• Containing a mixture of different tools to effect
  transformative change

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Lessons Learned Government Fragmentation Hinders
Progress

• Multiple governments lacking integration and
  coordination are a significant source of
  resistance hindering region-wide vacant property
  initiatives.
• Among the criticisms of uncoordinated government
  addressing Vacant Properties include
• Fragmentation works on a structural level to
  maintain and reinforce racial and social
  inequity, encourage sprawl and central city
  abandonment
• Fragmentation creates higher tax burdens for all
  regional residents (due to the inefficiency in
  government services and disparity in community
  resources)
• Fragmentation Causes Conflicts over Control
• Power over land
• Power over tax base

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Regional Policy is Needed to Adequately Address
the Vacancy Challenge

• The results of this model of governing creates
  and sustains inequalities.
• As localities become structurally and fiscally
  limited in their ability to scale solutions, the
  challenges of vacant property and the cycle of
  abandonment become increasingly taxing.

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Race, Regions and Concentrated Vacancy

• The racial component of the discussion is
  significant
• Building the right policy and implementation
  responses also means race should not be an
  afterthought in this critical process.
• Combating the elements which undermine regional
  effort such as parochialism and the effect of
  too many governments is important to reduce the
  complexity of direct intervention

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Sprawl and Vacant Properties Racialized Impact

• Residential segregation and sprawl leaves inner
  city communities isolated and multiple facing
  challenges
• Concentrations of aging infrastructure,
  deteriorating schools and commercial corridors
  and inadequate housing stock
• Resulting in Vacancy

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Limited Choices in the Metropolitan Marketplace

• The increased pressures placed on low income
  households is persistent and cumulative.
• The ability to exercise choice in the
  metropolitan housing and job markets is
  significantly diminished, sustaining a cycle of
  abandonment and social isolation concentrated in
  central cities.

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Concluding Thoughts

• Sprawl is a critical component of the Vacancy
  problem facing cities and increasingly, regions.
  Vacancy is a symptom of broader structural
  issues.
• A complete response to the vacancy challenge must
  assess inefficient sprawling growth and land use
  policies
• Any response to the Vacancy challenges must
  invoke policy solutions that are regional in
  scale. A sustainable vacancy solution requires a
  regional scale.
• Race is a critical consideration when
  establishing remedies to address region-wide
  vacancy challenges.
• Racial populations bear the greatest burden from
  the vacancy challenge, and racial/political
  conflicts may challenge solutions to problem.

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