Earlier today, I stumbled across a website that is essentially a photo essay entitled "100 Abandoned Houses" (hat tip PSFK)
100 Abandoned Houses is essentially a photo essay of the abandonment of homes in the Urban Croe of Detroit. Many of the houses are beautiful old homes that have just been left to rot and decay in the elements.
Detroit isn't unlike most large cities (although their situation may be a bit worse than most). They suffered the same fleeing out to the suburbs that all cities faced in the 70s, 80s and early 90s.
Now, the shells of homes are a reminder of urban flight, a sign of deteriorated/neglected neighborhoods, and a sign of the abandonement that many neighborhoods face. A photo essay like this could easily be done in virtually any large city in the United States -- and could easily be done in Kansas City. Heck, in Kansas City, it could likely be done in a short afternoon, and may only take walking a dozen city blocks to complete. I addressed this some back in October.
Meanwhile, today, Yael Abouhalikah at the Star had a good column today about how Kansas City's reliance on TIF projects is eating into the city budget-- with 23% of every sales tax dollar now being used to fund TIF projects, vs being invested back into the city's decaying infastructure.
But in addition to money being taken away from tax revenue to pay for TIF projects, the amount of tax revenue that is coming is also decreasing -- in part, because of the displacement of tax dollars that comes from these TIF projects. If a new tax-subsided restaurant or entertainment district opens up, dollars that are spent there are moved from places that aren't subsidized, causing tax revenu to decrease.
Let me first say, I don't oppose the use of TIF money for redevelopment. It is a necessary tool. However, we, as a city, have not been very smart about how we use it. Instead of focusing the dollars to help with revitalizing old neighborhoods and fixing existing infastructure, we've tended to over-spend on projects that:
a) Require us to build MORE infastructure to support
b) Displace dollars (and residents) from fully taxable locations into these TIF developments
c) Continue to suck resources away from the city's old neighborhoods, further causing them to fall into disrepair -- even though we have so much visual evidence of the blight and problems this creates.
This isn't just a KCMO problem -- although tax programs to support development at Zona Rosa and in Shoal Creek certainly are contributing to the problem. Pretty much all of the cities in the metro have done this. Overland Park continues to build new shopping centers closer and closer to the Oklahoma boarder while older neighborhoods and shopping centers become blighted and abandoned. Shawnee continues to subsidize development further west, even though there are tons of abandoned strip centers on the eastern side of the city. KCK continues to subsidize development out at the Legends area, even though their urban core is struggling and older malls like Indian Springs are abandoned..
It's time to get back to helping the neighborhoods. In the long term, focusing subsidy dollars on rebuidling and repopulating urban neighborhoods is a benefit for the city. We can increase the populations in these neighborhoods (which increases tax revenue) without needing to build more infastructure (it already exists) -- and leaves less infastructure that has to be supported long-term. The improved density makes public transportation more viable. And it would remove the blighted abandoned homes that are more common in many neighborhoods than ones with people living in them. And these abandoned houses increase the feeling of disrepair (ie: Broken Windows theory), and provide a safe-haven for criminal activity. Meanwhile, they hamper efforts to build communities and to have effective neighborhood watch programs.
It's time to change the focus of our subsidized dollars...and put an end to the popularity of abandoned houses in our own city.
(Photos on this page were lifted from the 100 Abandoned Houses website and are located in Detroit.)
Preaching to the choir, my friend. How can we get started?
Posted by: Scott | April 17, 2009 at 03:07 PM
Great post! The Mayor said he would help neighborhoods in KC. So far he hasn't. He's approved plenty of new TIF's though. A big problem that has to be overcome is the cost of bringing these abandoned houses back into use. Suburbs are experiencing this now as foreclosed homeowners tear up their property before the bank takes it. The numbers to fix up and return the house to use don't work. The stimulus money could be used for this purpose. Will it in KC? Go for it!
Posted by: Robyne | April 17, 2009 at 08:59 PM
Yeah Robyne, making the numbers work is tough. In order for someone to be able to make this work they have to have the money. Many of these houses can be bought for $10-20,000 -- however, would require $100k to fix up. Well, no bank is going to loan out money for mor ethan the house is worth. So it takes a lot of out of pocket cash in order for it to work (and there is a limit to who has that type of cash sitting around). It's a huge issue, and isn't going to happen on a grand scale without some type of government support...
Scott, I'm not 100% sure what the first step is to get started...I'm open to suggestions. But ignoring the problem sure isn't working...
Posted by: Brent | April 18, 2009 at 01:27 PM
The point on TIF isn't 100% true because we don't know where exactly money spent at P+L or Legends would've been spent if those developments didn't exist. Further, blaming the closing or lack of revenue at other establishments isn't correct because we need evidence making a direct correlation to the loss of revenue at the existing business. There are clear-cut abuses of TIF like the Wal-Mart situation at Bannister/Blue Ridge. I know for a fact that places like P+L or Legends attract a lot of money from people outside the residing county or even the entire region that wouldn't step foot downtown or in WyCo without the new development. If someone from Lawrence goes to KC specifically for a trip to the Legends, that is sales tax money, jobs, revenue going to Wyandotte County that is brand new. When discussing this theory that all sales tax money is just redistributed within the county/city, you are failing to admit that in many of the tourist-aimed developments, there is new revenue being created from people outside the immediate area. It is also true that money from the KS side is being dumped downtown at the P+L district that probably wouldn't have ended up in KCMO to begin with.
Posted by: hatercopter | April 19, 2009 at 11:13 AM
Hater,
I want to make it perfectly clear that I'm not criticizing the P&L TIF program. Honestly, I don't mind that development. It revitalized a nearly completely dead area of downtown, and is attracting tourism dollars that otherwise would not come to KCMO (although, admittedly, taking away solid convention dollars from the Plaza -- where these people used to go before). But overall, I think the P&L is probably a solid use of TIF (even if the financials were more risky to the taxpayers than they should have been). I wouldn't say the same about any of the redevelopment along Barry Road (most of which is TIFed) or Briarcliff or Shoal Creek.
I think the Legends has overall been pretty good for KCK -- although I do think that overall it has spread their city out a TON in a way that is killing them financailly because it has spread out their infastructure/public transit needs. But overall, I agree that the P&L is not a terrible use of TIF -- but do criticize the amount of financial risk that was involved and that no one apparently read the fine print -- ie, why is the entire district not open yet 18 months after it was "promised" to be open?
Posted by: Brent | April 19, 2009 at 06:51 PM
Re: P+L
Cordish did not sign any sort of contract mandating that the entire area be 100% leased. I don't know of any developer that opens new developments 100% leased. Look to Zona Rosa, One Nineteen, Park Place, etc. for examples. My thought and hope is that Cordish is looking for the RIGHT retail and not just any retail. If Cordish puts in the RIGHT tenants instead of just any tenants, the sales tax revenue could increase across the board. And in terms of P+L taking away from the Plaza-- I haven't heard of any bar/restaurants down there closing or losing considerable revenue. Have you?
I just think the discussion needs to center more on how TIF can be improved instead of generally blasting them. IMHO, the entire urban core needs super TIF and federal gov't relief to cover the difference as there are definite state of emergency areas. There are obvious abuses in many of the suburbs and the system needs to be corrected so strip malls aren't taking advantage of the system.
Posted by: hatercopter | April 22, 2009 at 10:19 PM