In about three months, people in Evansville will start to see nearly $1.7 million in new money for demolitions at work in the community.
That’s when Building Commissioner Ben Miller estimates contractors will be ready to begin razing 82 blighted and abandoned structures earmarked for demolition using federal money awarded Thursday. In the meantime, city officials intend to hold a public hearing soon to explain the program and hear input about properties that could be added to the list as replacements.
The federal demolition money — $1.68 million to be exact — is part of a pool of almost $19.9 million for which Evansville-Vanderburgh County competed with a dozen other Indiana counties with similar populations. That money, in turn, is part of $75 million the state made available through the U.S. Treasury Department’s “Hardest Hit Markets” program. And that money is part of $221.7 million awarded to the state by the Treasury Department, primarily for homeowner mortgage payment assistance.
Therein lay a key difference between the demolitions the federal money will pay for and demolitions annually carried out by the city using riverboat money.
Whereas the city’s only concern when it demolishes a property is destroying a health or safety hazard, a state announcement Thursday said the federal money is intended “to prevent avoidable foreclosures through the elimination of blighted, vacant and abandoned homes.”
“Our program is not just all about taking things down,” said Mark Neyland, director of asset preservation for the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority, which is administering the federal money.
“We looked to end use. What’s the end use going to be? What kind of impact could that have?” Neyland said.
The city’s bid for federal demolition funds had to come with specific proposed end uses for each targeted properties and designated program partners for each. The program partners are primarily nonprofits and community development corporations willing to own the properties and carry out the plans.
The city must now help its program partners acquire clear title to the properties.
Miller, who heads up the Evansville-Vanderburgh County Building Commission, said it’s all a collaborative effort.
“With our typical unsafe building program, we tear down buildings that we don’t own or have an interest in. We just tear them down because they’re unsafe,” Miller said. “In this program, our partners were looking at potential properties that are in neighborhoods that they’ve already invested in (by acquiring land or rehabilitating structures.)”
In such cases, new houses could be constructed where the blighted buildings stood. Other program partners want to tear down badly blighted houses in neighborhoods near structures they believe they can rehab.
“I think this program will really enhance our riverboat (funded) demolitions, to make a bigger impact,” Miller said.
Demolitions likely will begin in October, Miller said, but they will be sporadic. A key determining factor will be the time needed for acquisition. Miller said properties owned by the county, for example, might meet a wrecking ball sooner because there would be less paperwork.
Evansville-Vanderburgh competed with LaPorte, Vigo, Tippecanoe, Hendricks, Johnson, Madison, Monroe, Porter, Elkhart, Clark and Delaware counties for the demolition money. Cities in several of those counties learned Thursday that they also had been awarded money. With an award of $2.9 million, only Muncie-Delaware County received more.