Rochester exceeds goal for demolitions

The following news was released on 8/31 by the City of Rochester:

Mayor Robert J. Duffy today announced that the City has exceeded its goal for vacant structure demolitions. Since the Mayor took office in January, 2006, the City has eliminated its vacant structure backlog by demolishing 410 structures. As a result of the Mayor’s accelerating demolition program, the City has cleared 355 of those parcels since April of 2006. 260 properties are currently identified for demolition and are expected to come down within one year.

"I’m proud to announce that we have exceeded our goal, but we are not resting on our laurels," said Mayor Duffy. "This is an important step in the process. We’re starting to see encouraging projects like the upcoming development of the neighborhoods northeast of PAETEC Park and the recently completed ‘Carlson Commons’ affordable housing project in the Plymouth/Exchange neighborhood. We’re working hard to rebuild and revitalize Rochester, street by street and neighborhood by neighborhood."

Nate Rump, who lives next to the newly grass-covered lot on Niagara St. with his teenaged son, was thrilled to see the vacant house come down. The City encouraged Rump to reach out and start the process of acquiring the lot. Rump submitted a bid for $50 and City Council is expected to approve sale of the lot at its September 18 meeting. He plans to expand his yard and landscape the property.

"I couldn’t be happier," said Rump. "The vacant house was four feet away from mine. It was a hazard - there was a lot of drug activity going on there. Mayor Duffy made a commitment to take down these vacant houses and he is making it happen. We have seen a real difference in our neighborhood."

"Clearing vacant buildings has such a positive impact on our city," said NET Director Molly Clifford. "It improves public safety and beautifies our neighborhoods. People get excited when they learn that a house is coming down on their block. We love to see people like Nate Rump who say, ‘sign me up, I want to make my city beautiful.’"

"Bringing down these vacant structures has a real, immediate impact on people living in neighborhoods throughout our great city," said City Council Member Lovely Warren. "It also provides for economic growth and future investment."

"Clearing the backlog has put us in a much better position," said Director of Project Development Bret Garwood. "We’ve been focusing our efforts on development, and eliminating the backlog helps us assemble cleared lots for future projects. It’s a good place to be."

New Buffalo plan to demo 5,000 houses

Yesterday, Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown announced a plan to demolish 5,000 Buffalo houses, an effort he expects will take 5 years, and cost $100 Million. The financial plan calls for a mix of state, federal, city, and even private money. Read more here at Buffalo Rising Online.

Ironically, this Buffalo Rising article is immediately followed by another titled "Investments in our neighborhood housing stock," which looks into, and praises, several recent efforts to rehabilitate Buffalo houses.

How walkable is your neighborhood?

Got this lead today from the chair of the Conkey/Clifford Revitalization District committee - the new website/Google mashup Walkscore.com will tell you how walkable your neighborhood is.

All you need to provide is an address, and walkscore uses a geographic database of quality-of-life amenities within walking distance such as grocery stores, schools, theaters, and coffee shops (essential to quality of life, in my book!), and a proprietary algorithm (which they admit is still not perfect: it measures as the crow flies, although you'll be using your feet) to give you a single-number score of how walkable vs. auto-centric your world likely is. Scores range from 0 to 100 - above 70 is considered good, above 90 is considered Pedestrian Paradise. I tried several locations in and around Our Fair City, and could not find any location (except downtown) which got a 90 or better (see below).

The website also includes some links to the importance of walking and walkable communities. It was developed by the Sightline Institute, an advocacy organization in the Pacific northwest.

Some local examples:
Conkey/Clifford area-----------Score: 55-60
Neighborhood Of The Arts-----Score: 75
Dewey/Driving Park------------Score: 71
Linden Oaks Office Park--------Score: 32
German House on Gregory----Score: 88
Goodman and Monroe----------Score: 88
Main and Clinton downtown---Score: 97!

How does your neighborhood fare--?

The urban prairie expands

While running through the CCRD project area Saturday, I was disturbed to notice two (apparently) brand-new demolitions on the south side of Nielson Street, just outside (but on the edge of) our project area. One of the houses on the way to the landfill had caught my eye as a particularly fine structure, with a (increasingly rare) concrete-tile roof. See the picture here.

This now leaves the south side of Nielson Street with just *two* remaining houses (those at the ends).

Most of the rest of the block (map below) bounded by Neilson, Woodford, Conkey, and Harris, is within our focus area. On the north side of Woodford Street there are just 5 houses remaining, and two of those are City owned/posted.

This leaves an entire block in/around the CCRD project area that is now majority-vacant -- ouch.

My thanks to colleagues in Buffalo for the terminology "Urban Prairie."

Rochester releases housing study recommendations

On Thursday (July 26), the anticipated “recommendations” section of the Rochester Housing Market Study was released to the public. It can be read [here], in PDF form.

Regarding the recommendations, Mayor Duffy said:

“The next stage of policy-making will involve taking the Study to residents through public meetings in each quadrant of the city, meetings with neighborhood leaders and other community stakeholders, and working closely with City Council. The recommendations and public feedback will be used to form our new policy. It’s important that we offer everyone a seat at the table as we continue to shape our City’s housing policy.”

Some highlights from the section (4) dealing with abandoned properties--and some related items from other sections--are below:

4.1 Use data-driven analysis to develop a toolkit of interventions.

• Track foreclosure data.
• Improve tracking and analysis of Tax Foreclosed properties.
• Track property flipping to identify patterns of disinvestment and equity stripping.
• Evaluate current infill new construction programs and consider fewer projects of more scale.

4.2 Create a vacant property task force.

“Rochester has talented advocates and intermediaries who have studied and worked on the problems and are familiar with best practices in other cities. Many good ideas and efforts have been directed toward the problem.”

4.3 Support and Expand Education and Advocacy around distressed and vacant property issues and predatory lending.

• Expand and fund homeowner, homebuyer and landlord education placing emphasis on predatory lending.
• Support additional foreclosure counseling programs.
• Work with banks and other entities who own foreclosed properties to develop comprehensive strategies.

4.4 Utilize owner-repair programs.

“The Rehab Rochester program, when operational, was oversubscribed. Because of the limited amount of resources available to fund owner-repair programs, the City should consider various programmatic changes to maximize funding. Examples could include zero-interest loans to higher income-qualified homeowners, restricting the type of rehabilitation work that can be funded, and requiring a match percentage by homeowners to receive the funding. A stable, easy to access source of non-predatory loan capital, combined with technical assistance in scoping rehab work, will help owners, both homeowners and investors, be responsible property stewards.”

4.5 Review Code Enforcement Procedures and Data for Impact on Distressed Property.

4.6 Strategically demolish obsolete properties.

“It will be important to have consensus with neighbors as to the type of property demolished and the future uses of the land. Demolition plans should be integrated with neighborhood planning efforts and land banking efforts. Properly managed open space, as suggested in Issue 8, can improve the quality of life in the denser neighborhoods.”

4.7 Land bank strategic City-owned parcels.

4.8 Create incentives to encourage buyers to choose City neighborhoods.

4.9 Offer tax abatement on improvements.

4.10 Re-design and more aggressively market employee assisted housing loans.

7.2 Create a Neighborhood Planning Challenge Fund.

“The fund would provide grants for neighborhood planning but also subsequent dollars for implementation after the plan is complete. The Wachovia Regional Foundation in Philadelphia, for instance, provides $100,000 neighborhood planning grants and implementation grants up to $750,000.”

8.2 Actively use open space as a community revitalization tool.

• Create a Rochester cleaning and greening organization.

“Detroit, Flint, Cleveland, Youngstown and Buffalo are all exploring, or already implementing, initiatives to simultaneously land bank and green vacant land. The most established example is through the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s Philadelphia Green Program, which manages, cleans and greens vacant land in focused areas throughout the City. The experience of Philadelphia Green is instructive. They provide technical assistance and funding to community organizations to maintain vacant land.”

• Create an open space strategy for depreciated and distressed areas.

“In some communities, the City should plan for shrinkage. A key component of this task is to plan for a greater emphasis on open space. An open space strategy should identify where existing parks should be improved, where to focus street improvement dollars and where new open spaces could be created from vacant land.”

The full recommendations portion of the Housing Market Study can now be viewed at:

http://www.rochesterhousingstudy.com/reports/pdf/housingmarketstudyrecommendations.pdf

Abandoned Buildings Guidebook available online

A few years ago the New York State Department of State published this abandoned buildings guidebook, entitled "Opportunities Waiting To Happen." The guidebook is available online at a related website [here--as a set of PDFs]. When you check it out, notice the great photograph of the magnificent "high victorian" Rice Building in Troy, the rehab of which was a project of the Troy Architecture Project (TAP), a regional design center and sister organization to the Rochester Regional Community Design Center.

Blast from the past: newly elected Mayor Johnson calls for rehabbing 305 abandoned buildings

I recently came across this article [link here, relevant text below] from over a decade ago, from Black Enterprise magazine (May, 1994). The interview is with newly-elected Mayor William Johnson, in which he mentions plans to rehab 305 abandoned buildings. Interestingly, he doesn't focus on housing (probably because he's being interviewed by a business-oriented magazine), but rather rehabbed commercial buildings providing low-cost options for people from nearby neighborhoods to open small businesses. It would be interesting to know what became of those plans...

Rochester: face-lift for "The World's Image Center."

Richard Prince

Black Enterprise, May 1994

The signals that things would be different in Rochester came even before January's inauguration of Mayor William A. Johnson Jr. For his transition co-chairs on economic development, Johnson appointed African-American and Hispanic small-business owners and, in a role reversal, it was they who gave direction to members of the city's business establishment.

Rochester, N.Y., an old industrial city on Lake Ontario, today touts itself as "The World's Image Center," acknowledging the dominance of the city by major employers Eastman Kodak Co., Xerox Corp. and Bausch and Lomb, makers of optical equipment.

What most concerns Johnson, however, is the city undergirding the image--a city 31.5% African-American that began the decade with nearly one-fourth of its residents below the poverty level. Johnson intends to rehabilitate 305 of Rochester's abandoned buildings. "It doesn't make sense to build houses and not have services--cafes, boutiques, for example--that would create ownership opportunities and jobs for people," Johnson says, adding that empowerment efforts will focus on "local people first."