In the Spotlight Greater Kansas City LISC leads community wide effort Abandoned and vacant properties can cripple our urban-core neighborhoods. They reduce property values, hinder tax revenues, discourage development; and they are physical hazards and magnets for crime. With approximately 15,000 vacant properties estimated in the metro area, Greater Kansas City LISC is acutely aware of the challenges they present and in 2009 made the issue a priority of its state policy agenda.
“Our mission is to turn struggling neighborhoods into sustainable communities; and in order to do this, new strategies must be employed to reduce Kansas City’s inventory of vacant property,” said Julie Porter, Executive Director of Greater Kansas City LISC. She added, “I’m pleased to report that Greater Kansas City LISC’s state policy work around vacant properties has resulted in both successful policy changes and visibility around our programmatic work.”
This past legislative session in Kansas, Greater Kansas City LISC and its Kansas Policy Network passed legislative changes to the Kansas Abandoned Housing Act. These changes will allow not-for-profit organizations to more quickly rehabilitate distressed property and return that property to available affordable housing. LISC and policy network efforts also enabled landbanking in all Kansas localities.
Greater Kansas City LISC’s State Policy Director, Ashley Jones-Wisner, explained: “By making minor changes to the existing Abandoned Housing Act, the not-for-profit organizations that work to rehabilitate urban housing will now have less red tape and legal fees that can drain their resources. What this means for our neighborhoods is that vacant properties are turned around more quickly, thereby improving neighborhood safety, appearance and property values.”
Greater Kansas City LISC also convened a metro-wide Vacant Properties Symposium in September 2009. “One of the important roles we play in the community is to assemble diverse groups and facilitate a dialogue on complex issues relating to urban revitalization,” said Jones-Wisner. “The challenge of reducing the number of abandoned and vacant properties is such an issue; it’s too large for one group to solve and will require a public-private collaborative effort.”
The Vacant Properties Symposium, facilitated by Joe Schilling, a founding member of the National Vacant Properties Campaign, brought together community leaders to assess the scope of vacant property issues in Kansas City and to survey effective policies established by other U.S. cities. “It was clear from the symposium that data systems and code enforcement were two keys issues which the group wanted to look at more critically,” added Jones-Wisner.
In response, Greater Kansas City LISC hosted the first session of a vacant property education series in May around data and information systems. Michael Schramm from Case Western Reserve spoke to key stakeholders about the importance of building information systems and provided best practice examples from across the country.
“Rethinking Code Enforcement,” the second session in the series, was co-hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City on July 15. Doug Leeper, a nationally recognized expert on code enforcement and author of the P.A.C.E. (Pro-Active Code Enforcement) training program, was the featured speaker. Leeper teaches for the California Association of Code Enforcement Officers and the American Association of Code Enforcement and has supervised over 32,000 code enforcement cases, overseen the execution of over 1,100 inspection/abetment warrants and the court ordered demolition of nearly 300 dangerous buildings.
This educational session brought together representatives from city government and community leaders to review successful models from around the country and to discuss what may work locally. Participants learned about strategic code enforcement and problem solving, discussed the tough challenges at the local level, heard from city leadership from Topeka, Kansas City, Kan., and Kansas City, Mo., and identified next steps.
Greater Kansas City LISC is well positioned to facilitate these discussions. Stewardship of three policy networks has helped Greater Kansas City LISC become known as the “go to” community development policy organization in the metropolitan area. Under LISC’s leadership, the policy networks have also successfully initiated and passed 10 pieces of legislation in both Kansas and Missouri. Greater Kansas City LISC has also secured over $1.6 million in state and federal funding to support community organizing, crime and safety, and economic development initiatives.
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