An excavator tears down an abandoned house on Oklahoma Avenue in Flint’s east side in 2011. Flint, Detroit, Saginaw, Pontiac and Grand Rapids are getting $100 million in federal funds for blight demolitions this summer.
GRAND RAPIDS — When it comes to neighborhood blight, it’s a bit of a cliché at this point to say Grand Rapids is not Flint or Detroit.
However, each of the three cities, plus Saginaw and Pontiac, collectively are getting $100 million in federal funds this summer to demolish blighted and abandoned properties. It is a move advocates say will help stabilize neighborhoods critically wounded by the foreclosure crisis and, in some cases, decades of investment and population losses.
In West Michigan, though, city leaders and housing developers still are unsure how that money can best be used in Grand Rapids, which most agree has some scattered blight, but, when compared to eastern Michigan, boasts a healthier and more diversified economy with good housing stock boosted by increasing demand.
“We think we’re pleased,” said Greg Sundstrom, Grand Rapids city manager, reacting to the funding announcement.
Much still is up in the air regarding the money. The $100 million comes through the U.S. Treasury’s Hardest Hit Fund, part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) created in 2010 to help homeowners avoid foreclosure.
Congressman Dan Kildee, D-Flint Township, has championed expansion of the program to allow some of the funds to be used for demolishing abandoned and blighted properties, arguing that eliminating blight can help reduce foreclosures by stabilizing surrounding property values and reducing neighborhood crime.
The Michigan State Housing Development Authority will disburse the funds on a reimbursement basis capped at $25,000 per property. How much each municipality will get depends the scope of submitted plans. Nonetheless, MSHDA would like to see demolitions begin this summer.
“We will use an approach that considers not only data on foreclosure and vacancy, but also looks at local community plans to assess the inventory of properties that qualify,” said Michele Wildman, a MSHDA blight expert.
What constitutes blight in GR?
Housing experts say one thing that still needs to be figured out is what, exactly, constitutes “blight” in Grand Rapids, and whether the definition is different from other Michigan cities.
Another question is whether simply vacant properties should be deemed blighted and considered for removal. According to U.S. Census Bureau estimates, there are approximately 3,000 vacant “units” in Grand Rapids, compared to about 6,000 in Flint and 40,000 in Detroit.
This boarded-up home at 1347 Grandville Avenue SW is among more than 40 properties in Grand Rapids being eyed for demolition this year using state blight elimination funding harnessed by LINC Community Revitalization and the Inner City Christian Federation.
In nearly all places, there’s nothing strictly illegal about a property being vacant as long as the taxes on it are paid and it’ s up to city code, although many cities keep a vacant property registry. Currently in Grand Rapids, there are 928 properties registered as vacant.
Although Grand Rapids leaders have expressed interest in non-demolition uses for the money, Wildman said the $100 million is considered demolition- specific, and Kildee said the money is limited to residential property. Jonathan Bradford, director of the Inner City Christian Federation, a nonprofit housing developer, expressed concern about how the state might define what constitutes a “blighted” property in Grand Rapids.
“The break point here has got to be different than it is in Detroit,” said Bradford, whose organization owns some of the homes on the city’s blight list, and which is planning to demolish properties as part of the Tapestry Square redevelopment.
“Preserving the housing stock here is much more realistic.”
To some, “blight” in Grand Rapids might simply be a home with “great bones, a solid roof, solid siding, but simply boarded- up windows,” said Dave Allen, director of the Kent County Land Bank Authority, during a statewide MLive live chat on the blight issue this week.
“In other neighborhoods, blight might simply be a neighbor that does not take care about his or her property,” said Allen. Regardless of the interpretation, “we have very little severe housing cases in Grand Rapids where a complete demolition is necessary.”
To Bradford, blight means buildings abandoned for months or years with serious structural damage that have no hope of rehabilitation for cost reasons.
“I would be really surprised if there were 50 of those in the whole city.”
Housing market is rebounding
City staff say blighted properties are scattered throughout Grand Rapids, and there is a high bar owners must hurdle before a structure may be torn down.
Although there are certain allowances for demolition, city policy has favored rehabilitation over demolition of closed, vacant or abandoned properties since the historic preservation movement started gaining steam in the 1970s.
Virginia Million, city’s code compliance manager, said the city does regular blight inspections designed to incentivize property owners to keep buildings up to code. Shabby homes with tall grass, weeds and boarded-up windows incur escalating fees that eventually culminate in a property lien.
Abandoned properties eventually can be demolished, but it’ s a measure of last resort in Grand Rapids, said Million, approved when the cost to bring the structure up to code would exceed the projected value were it to be successfully rehabilitated.
On the “blight list” of abandoned or vacant buildings with code violations that require regular inspection, there are 373 properties, the majority located on the city’s Southeast Side.
The number of properties on the list has been decreasing, Million said.
“I think the influx of cheap houses that hit the market over the last couple of years has greatly diminished a lot of the problems in Grand Rapids,” she said.
In the wake of the foreclosure crisis, Grand Rapids and Kent County began working with private investors through the federally funded Neighborhood Stabilization Program to buy vacant houses, rehab them and return them to owner-occupied status. In 2009, Kent County approved a land bank that aims to get foreclosed properties back on the tax rolls with the help of state grants or tax-increment financing. Just this week, the city agreed to sign over 163 tax-foreclosed properties to the land bank to re-develop, re-purpose or re-sell within 18 months.
The local housing market has also rebounded significantly. Not long ago, the market in some places around Kent County had almost two years worth of excess supply, meaning it would take that long to sell out if no more houses were listed.
Currently, the supply is less than three months overall.
“We’re down to the lowest inventory that I can recall in 40 years of doing this,” said Grand Rapids Realtor Terry Westbrook.
“Demand for decent housing in the city of Grand Rapids is akin to a prairie fire,” Bradford said. “It’s wild right now. That’s why rents are going up, too.”
Grand Rapids ‘still has a need’
Although Grand Rapids may not be in the same situation as Flint — where land bank officials hope to demolish 1,600-some properties with the federal money — that doesn’t mean the city can’t find a good use for the demolition funds, some say.
LINC co-director Darel Ross.
Darel Ross, co-director of LINC Community Revitalization Inc., a nonprofit housing developer heavily involved in the Southeast Side, thinks the funds can be useful in tackling the scattered properties around the city that do need to be demolished.
“It’s not fair to say that we’re not as bad as somewhere else, and therefore don’t have a need,” Ross said.
LINC already is harnessing blight elimination funds from MSHDA that became available earlier this year from a settlement with large banks accused of questionable lending practices in the lead-up to the housing crisis.
The nonprofit was approved by the state for more than $680,000 to demolish, among other properties, a cluster of Southeast Side residential units built by the defunct Madison Square Housing Cooperative in the early 1980s.
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Ross said the poorly designed and constructed buildings have been eyed for demolition by city and state officials for years, and LINC has pitched the land as better suited for green space or redevelopment as lower density housing. In the Cottage Grove area, Ross said there are large, obsolete industrial properties that could be addressed with the blight demolition funds now that the Brownfield redevelopment option has been scrapped by the state.
“I think a $1 million allocation to Grand Rapids or Kent County could be easily absorbed,” he said. For many years, “resources to address blight have been hard to get.”
In the city’s Oakdale neighborhood, a triangle slice of the Southeast Side bounded by Eastern and Kalamazoo avenues and Griggs Street SE, the neighborhood association has had trouble recruiting business to the Boston Square district because of issues with crime and blight.
Bruce Boman, neighborhood youth director, said the area was hit hard during the foreclosure crisis. The Oakdale Neighbors recently organized a letter-writing campaign to highlight the issue, mailing hand-written letters by neighborhood kids who live around blighted homes to Mayor George Heartwell.
“When you have properties that aren’t occupied and people aren’t taking care of them, there are people who take advantage of that,” Boman said. “It might be houses where drugs are sold, but because there’s nobody living there, people get the perspective that the neighborhood doesn’t care.”
That’s certainly not the case, according to 10-year-old Godlove Byiringiro, who lives on Watkins Street SE. Byiringiro sent a letter to Heartwell along with a photo of a blighted home at 1332 Eastern Ave. SE.
“These homes brings gangs,” he wrote. “I don’t feel safe walking from school because of gangs. I and my sister who is 12 were walking from the bus stop (and) we saw a gang of five people and I got scared ‘cause they were calling us scaredycats. My sister told them to be quiet.”
Byiringiro ended his note with a pledge: “I am willing to help.”
Email Garret Ellison or follow him on Twitter.