What now for South Bend neighborhoods after '1,000 houses in 1,000 days'?

SOUTH BEND — When Corey Hill moved into his rental home on Harrison Avenue in 2012, the street blended in with the rest of the neighborhood on the city’s near northwest side.

But today, several old homes that once stood on the 700 block are gone as a result of the “1,000 Houses in 1,000 Days” initiative launched by Mayor Pete Buttigieg in 2013, a year after he took office.

The rundown homes have made way for open plots of land.

“They turned it into a ghost block,” Hill said.

Buttigieg, who called for addressing 1,000 abandoned houses through demolition and repairs, declared victory at the 1,000-day mark in 2015. Action was actually taken on a larger number — 1,122 houses, with roughly 40 percent of them repaired and 60 percent demolished. The homes had been deemed unsafe under state guidelines, and Buttigieg said he was trying to tackle head-on the urban blight that afflicts neighborhoods.

But a question still looms: What will be the fate of neighborhoods peppered with vacant lots?

“I would like to live in an actual neighborhood where people are,” said Hill, 36.

South Bend officials say that while there is no grand plan for the vacant lots, the city intends to help develop a portion of them. But to do so, they say, a team effort is needed that will include neighborhood groups, private developers and financial institutions.

Some of the ideas that have been considered include turning the lots into side yards for existing homes, community gardens or pocket parks.

Pamela Meyer, South Bend’s director of neighborhood redevelopment, estimated the city has acquired a “couple of hundred” vacant lots in recent years from St. Joseph County in tax certificate sales. The city could end up selling them, for example, to developers or neighborhood groups for projects.

“We’re looking at specific target areas because we don’t want to drop things into neighborhoods in various little spots,” she said.

Beyond the lots, the city discovered in a survey last year that the top priority for residents was safer, better-looking neighborhoods.

Only 19 percent of those surveyed said they were satisfied with the maintenance of city streets, sidewalks and infrastructure. More than half said they didn’t feel their neighborhood had improved over the past five years, and only 30 percent thought the city had “vibrant, welcoming neighborhoods.”

Buttigieg acknowledged that the takeaway from the survey was his administration needed to work more on neighborhoods.

Fair enforcement?

Not surprisingly, all the candidates vying to succeed Buttigieg as mayor next year have cited neighborhood development as a top issue. It’s time for the city to spend less attention on downtown buildings and more on neighborhood housing and streets, they say.

One of those candidates, Common Council member Regina Williams-Preston, has argued that Buttigieg’s 1,000-houses initiative relied on aggressive code enforcement that caused “poor people” and “people of color” to be displaced from homes when repairs couldn’t be made swiftly.

Williams-Preston has said she and her husband were victims of the unfair code enforcement, as fines on nine properties they owned at one point topped $72,000 (they later settled with the city, paying off substantially lowered amounts).

Although the mayor’s goals to bulldoze and repair homes were met, she said, keeping residents in neighborhoods wasn’t a top priority. Williams-Preston, however, credits Buttigieg and the city for later re-evaluating code violation enforcement.

“You can’t just look at the buildings and infrastructure,” she said. “You have to look at the quality of life of people who live there.”

The city doesn’t fully agree with Williams-Preston’s portrayal. The notion that residents were “displaced” under the initiative is false, said Liz Maradik, a planner in the Department of Community Investment.

“The houses had been unoccupied for at least 90 days,” she said, adding that she doesn’t think many of the demolished homes were locally owned. “I’m of the impression that the majority were owned by either LLCs or out-of-town investors, rather than local individuals.”

Maradik said the city hasn’t done an analysis, however, to determine how many owners of demolished homes belonged to local residents.

Lead poisoning

Buttigieg ran into another neighborhood problem in 2017, one that has festered in the city for decades but became prominent again after new figures on lead poisoning were released.

The figures showed that children in some South Bend neighborhoods, especially on the northwest side, had unusually high rates of lead in their blood. The children were exposed to lead-based paint in older homes that have not been well maintained. It didn’t help that the city housing authority failed to win a federal grant to help remediate homes tainted with lead paint.

After the numbers raised alarm bells, and neighborhood groups and local leaders began looking for solutions, the city secured $2.3 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to address the issue in dozens of homes. It also secured a $670,000 grant from the state. Last year, the city also dedicated $200,000 of its own money toward lead-related efforts.

This year’s budget reflected a focus on other neighborhood issues, with more funding for curbs and sidewalks and exterior home repairs. A rental housing inspection program, meanwhile, was recently approved that will require inspections for thousands of rental units.

Looking ahead, one question that remains is how much the city can do to lure new development to its neighborhoods, beyond the downtown core.

Some strides have been made on small housing projects in some areas. On the near northwest side, for example, Mike Keen and his building partner, Dwayne Borkholder, helped Habitat for Humanity design and build a handful of energy-efficient homes.

Among other things, Keen, a former Indiana University South Bend professor, and his partner plan to build a “tiny living community” with a handful of small, energy-efficient homes near Portage Avenue and Cushing Street.

A land-use plan, meanwhile, is being developed by a California urban planning firm for the near northwest side. The firm, which was hired by the city, will finish the long-range plan this summer. The plan includes several ideas for redeveloping vacant lots, Keen said, and “it could be used as a model for other areas of the city.”

On the southeast side, the United Way of St. Joseph County last month announced plans to raise $3.5 million to build a neighborhood center that would be anchored by a child care center but also feature health services and other charities.