Mayor says Evansville will work to obtain share of $19.9 million to demolish houses

Winnecke pledged after a public forum at the C.K. Newsome Center that he and other city officials will work energetically to meet the administrative demands of applying for as much of the money as it can get.

“It’s going to be a tall task, and we need to put our best foot forward,” the mayor said, noting that city officials don’t know when they will receive an application. State officials say that likely will happen in mid-2014 as part of a statewide tiered rollout.

Local government — it may be the city or the county, according to funding regulations — will compete for portions of the money with a dozen Indiana counties with populations of similar size to Vanderburgh. There are five other groups of counties that will compete with each other for portions of $75 million set aside for demolitions statewide. The money, administered by the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority, is part of $221.7 million awarded to the state by the U.S. Treasury Department, primarily for homeowner mortgage payment assistance.

The Housing and Community Development Authority, which says Indiana has the highest percentage of abandoned foreclosed homes in the country, proposes a partnership with municipalities to dispense the demolition money.

But if local governments want their share, they must succeed in a complex state scoring process that calls on them to identify the structures they want demolished and end uses for each of them. Applications also should include bids from licensed contractors that include legal removal of debris and the backfill of basements or cellars.

Applicants also will have to acquire clear title to the properties and quitclaim those to designated program partners such as nonprofits and community development corporations before demolition.

“We give more points if there’s a more concrete plan in place for end use versus just, ‘We speculate that it might be used for this eventually.’ If you actually have agreements in place or have identified program partners who are willing to take possession of that lot and redevelop it or do something, we give you more points within that scoring criteria,” said Mark Neyland, director of asset preservation for the Housing and Community Development Authority.

Local government could acquire title to properties that don’t sell at tax sales or buy them from individuals or companies, although that process comes with complications that state officials said may ultimately leave properties ineligible.

“We would encourage cities to work with their local authorities, their county commissions, and try to work out comprehensive solutions, ways that they can work with county to acquire some of these properties,” Neyland said at Wednesday’s forum.

The Courier & Press reported last month that a two-year investigation by the newspaper had uncovered at least 195 local houses that have been vacant for one year or longer.

Winnecke acknowledged that money for demolitions alone is useful, but not a remedy to the causes of vacant, abandoned and blighted housing. He said his administration is working on a proposal.

“We’re not ready to roll it out tomorrow or even next week, but we have a couple registries and we’re trying to figure out how we can marry those in maybe a more web-based solution and then look at how we can add something that other communities have done to define vacant properties, but you don’t create that overnight,” the mayor said.