(Originally published by Lloyd Wimp at his View from the Highway blog.)
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This past Monday (October 20), along with John Miller and Pat Woosley of NA Community Housing, I had the pleasure of attending a live teleconferenced seminar sponsored by the Federal Reserve System entitled Confronting the Neighborhood Impacts of Foreclosure.
The local venue for this all day event was held at the Louisville Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Others in attendance from Corydon, Louisville, and elsewhere who deal with housing issues in one way or another in their respective locales.
The panel consisted of Mayors and Housing Department officials from cities around the country, Federal Reserve Board Members, representatives from NeighborWorks America, National Housing Institute, National Community Stabilization Trust, JP Morgan Chase, and Enterprise Community Partners to name a few.
The presentation centered around the small portion ($3.92 Billion) of the $700 Billion that has been set aside to be deal with foreclosure issues at the local level and how best to utilize those limited funds. It is information that any city government could find useful in these trying times.
While most of the legal and financial jargon was well above my pay grade, I found a much of what was presented to be germane to our own local conversation.
There were numerous examples of how municipalities from other states have successfully dealt with such financial crises of the past three decades, instances brought on by plant closings, which led to job losses and a decline in population followed by deterioration of housing stock in what were once thriving neighborhoods.
Such things as increased code enforcement, city/county owned land banks, greenfields, small neighborhood parks, urban agriculture, mixed use properties, and much more were sited as successful ways to deal with vacant and abandoned property.
The folks who had initiated these programs in their own communities suggested a variety of ways to tweak them to fit in cities of all sizes in all states in order for them to get the biggest bang for the bucks available.
Does it mean that an adjustment in thinking will be required ? Yes, but it also means that we do not have to reinvent the wheel. Templates are available to any who choose to look at them.
Click on this link and you will find access to Power Point © presentations from previous sessions in this series. This particular meeting should be available there within the next few days.
Other links of interest include:
NeighborWorks America
Enterprise Community Partners
Housing Partnership Network
Local Initiatives Support Corporation
Genesee County Land Bank
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The PDF's of the material presented at this meeting are now up on the link provided in the post.
Lloyd, pursuant to our attempt to log in the other day ... I was having problems getting on MySpace today, and what I had to do in the end is delete my cookies. The unfortunate side effect of this is that all your saved passwords disappear, too, but it solved the problem.
It almost frightens me to think of federal monies flowing into the hands of the local politicos who have done such a number on this town over the decades. Akin to sending a Trillion dollars to Wall ST to fix their greed. Something doesn't add up. I'm keeping my fingers crossed at least John Gonder will offer new ideas viz NAs perpetual ghetto. Thanks for the report Lloyd.
Are we watching capitalism being re-written before our eyes? The ultra rich are being taken care of again. The poor suffer and the gap between each grows further apart.
I am hoping that New Albany takes advantage of this opportunity to begin to address some of its lingering problems with vacant and abandoned property. The funds are available on a competitive basis (Indiana gets about $84 million outside of the large cities like Indianapolis and Ft. Wayne) and the money is both flexible and highly regulated like CDBG. It's available and targeted only to address some of the very problems with housing that this community was needing to deal with prior to the current mortgage/credit/banking crisis.
Unlike the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, this small (only $3.92 billion!) is an attempt to deal with the problem on a local level, block by block and neighborhood by neighborhood.
John Miller
New Albany Community Housing
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