The City After Abandonment

Chapter 9. Targeting Strategies of Three Detroit CDCs

CHAPTER 9 Targeting Strategies of Three Detroit CDCs June Manning Thomas In considering what happens to cities after abandonment, and why, it’s essential to note that CDCs have played a major role in helping to fill in the gaps left literally by the demolition of abandoned buildings and economically by t he decline in private investment. Yet we k now very little about how CDCs choose to invest housing development dollars in the context of vacancy and reduced market demand and why they use some patterns of land use as opposed to o thers. Such knowledge is important if we expect CDCs in distressed environments to play a role in neighborhood redevelopment , in a way that has identifiable impact. This study explores what factors appear to i nfluence CDC decisions to target their use of land in areas that have experienced abandonment and in a city experiencing population loss. CDCs carry out de fac to land use strategies through their selection of which local projects to u ndertake a nd w here to i nvest i n resources such as playgrounds, housing rehabilitation, or housing construction. I l ook in particular at how CDCs have chosen to locate the housing they have built, choosing to target certain blocks or not. I examine three CDCs in Detroit, Michigan, u sing a c ase study approach to a ssess r ationales, b enefits, and drawbacks of different ways of targeting: modified dispersion, infill housing , or closely targeted development. Targeting is just one issue related to the effectiveness of CDC activities. Local g overnments ma y ha ve m ore e ffect o n c ommunity de velopment i f they target certain areas of their cities. Yet, as a r esearch question, CDC targeting has received little attention, with a few exceptions that focused on 198 June Manning Thomas neighborhood spillovers due to nonprofit housing or related issues such as land acquisition or new urbanism strategies. Because CDCs are major investors in lower-income neighborhoods and aim to s trengthen them, any efforts they make to have greater effects with their resources call for examination . Key questions for this research were whether the three case study CDCs did target their investments spatially and why or why not. One might assume a priori the need for CDCs to target limited housing construction dollars, so as to create critical mass capable of changing market perception about an area, but this study suggests that, even when CDCs attempt to target investment , a number of factors may interfere, such as lack of organizational capacity , a weak local demographic profile, or the role of government at several levels. CDCs and Targeted Housing A bigger question is whether financial investment in housing and community development matters in efforts to improve central-city neighborhoods. At least a couple of examples suggest that it does. Schill et al. studied the nation’s largest neighborhood improvement program, launched in 1985 in New York City, involving an investment of over $5 billion in close to 100 different programs . Many affected New York neighborhoods saw new housing and businesses filling vacant and empty lots, but this initiative may not be replicable; it was a ma ssive investment in a multidimensional effort coordinated by a strong city government with more than adequate financial resources. A smaller city that implemented a successful strategy for neighborhood revitalization, in part using housing investment, was Richmond, Virginia. The city chose to invest its Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) and other f unds in seven neighborhoods w ith high levels of poverty a nd housing vacancy; six of those neighborhoods had housing vacancy levels of at least 18 percent, more than twice the city’s average rate, and one-third of the housing was vacant in one of those areas. After expenditure of funds, researchers l ooked f or t he t hreshold l evel o f i nvestment n ecessary to r aise surrounding housing prices and identified this level as $30,000 per block over five years or $6,000 per year. Th e findings suggest targeting resources yielded increased values in nearby properties, but many conditions existed in Richmond that would not easily transfer elsewhere, such a s substantial Targeting Strategies of Three Detroit CDCs 199 investments by t he Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) a nd t he federal HOME housing construction program, in addition to investment by the City of Richmond...