Center for Community Progress Seeks Director of the National Land Bank Network

The Center for Community Progress is seeking to fill the position of Director of the National Land Bank Network (NLBN). The field of land banking is at a crucial moment. Of the almost 200 land banks in operation across the country today, many face shared challenges despite a great deal of variability in geography, market conditions, organizational capacity, local policies, and state enabling legislation. No national platform exists to regularly connect, convene, support, and uplift this extensive network of land banks and community development practitioners. The Community Progress team is launching a new National Land Bank Network (NLBN) to communicate and draw attention to the achievements and trends of land banks, develop innovative programs and policy reforms, provide topical, customized training for practitioners, connect a highly knowledgeable field of professional practitioners, and expand the field of practice. 

The Director will serve as the engineer of a new, formalized, national platform for NLBN members to connect and share knowledge, develop innovative programs and policy reforms, and learn new skills through advanced technical assistance. This person will drive the strategy and tactical leadership needed to successfully connect and collaborate with a broad base of stakeholders and work to systematically address common challenges facing land banks. 

Center for Community Progress works to foster strong, equitable communities where vacant, abandoned, and deteriorated properties are transformed into assets for neighbors and neighborhoods. A national leader in land policy and land banking, Community Progress works to assess and reform policies and practices to ensure the effective, equitable reuse of vacant, abandoned, and deteriorated properties across the nation. To learn more or to apply or to apply, please visit the Center for Community Progress website.

Commentary: Land banks transform communities. They're running out of funding.

It's been 12 years since the 2008 financial crisis devastated neighborhoods across the state, and many communities are still reeling from the effects. One is hard pressed to find a community in New York that doesn't have zombie properties. Upstate, cities like Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Albany still struggle to recover from the one-two punch of population migration from urban centers to the suburbs and decades of systematic disinvestment caused by the discriminatory practice of redlining. The consequences have been devastating. Disparity between white and black home-ownership rates in the cities of Albany and Buffalo is among the widest in the nation. A recent study found that the life expectancy of a child born in Arbor Hill — in the shadow of the state Capitol — is seven years less than that of a child born in an adjacent affluent neighborhood.

Our rural communities continue to grapple with economic recovery and a lack of quality affordable housing. Rural blight remains rampant throughout the state. One must simply take a drive through the Southern Tier or Mohawk Valley to see the legacy of failed federal policies and the widespread financial misconduct of 2008 etched into the idyllic landscapes.

Across New York, communities have taken the fight against blight into their own hands. Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed New York's groundbreaking land bank legislation in 2011, enabling local governments to form the powerful nonprofit organizations. Today there are 25 land banks from Buffalo to Long Island, and 10 more are expected to be formed throughout the state. Funding provided by the attorney general's office, combined with local support, has enabled New York to quickly establish one of the most active and sophisticated networks of land banks in the United States.

Communities with land banks are showing incredible and measurable signs of progress, demolishing hundreds of blighted structures, achieving unprecedented levels of local ownership, reducing absentee landlordism and speculation, increasing the supply of quality affordable housing and returning private investment into neighborhoods where most financial institutions still fail to lend.

The number of vacant residential properties in Syracuse has declined by more than 20 percent over the past five years, and there are plans to create 50 affordable homes on vacant properties reclaimed by the Greater Syracuse Land Bank. Some neighborhoods in Albany are experiencing the first new construction in years, and the Albany County Land Bank is partnering with the city of Albany to redevelop more than 80 properties in distressed neighborhoods. The Greater Mohawk Valley Land Bank is transforming a tax-delinquent mobile home park in Herkimer into high-efficiency housing that will serve as a model for similar communities throughout the country. The list goes on and on.

However, the grant funding that has enabled so many land banks help communities change their trajectories is largely depleted, and funding has not been committed beyond the end of this calendar year. Without sufficient financial support from New York state, the number of blighted problem properties that New York's land banks can reclaim and the potential to transform more communities will be limited.

Land banks exist because historic policies, predatory practices and traditional approaches to reclaiming vacant properties have failed many of our communities. We have an opportunity to continue to invest in a proven solution that helps create the safe and affordable neighborhoods that all New Yorkers deserve. New York cannot afford to let its land banks remain unfunded.

Adam Zaranko is the President of the New York Land Bank Association and Executive Director of the Albany County Land Bank Corporation.

Commentary via Times Union, March 18, 2020 read published Commentary HERE

Albany County Land Bank says it's now spurred $20 million in private investment

The Albany County Land Bank has now sold more than 500 properties, the nonprofit corporation announced this week. The land bank estimates the sales have spurred more than $20 million in private investment.

The Albany County Land Bank is one of 25 similar organizations around the state that were created following the Great Recession to shepherd vacant or foreclosed properties back to productive use. The organization has been funded by the state attorney general’s office, the county and other partners. It’s the second-largest land bank in the state.

Read the full article from the Albany Business Review HERE

Albany County Land Bank sells 500th property

The Albany County Land Bank announced Thursday that it has surpassed 500 property sales since its formation in 2014 and become the second-largest of the state’s 25 land banks.

Through the end of 2019, it had acquired 355 vacant buildings and 745 vacant parcels that were abandoned or had been seized in tax foreclosures. Also, it stabilized 74 buildings and demolished 75, and improved 118 vacant lots.

These properties have been in every municipality in the county, and have ranged from single- and multi-family residential buildings to small urban lots to rural properties exceeding 60 acres.

Read the full article from the Daily Gazette HERE

Syracuse to build 50 affordable single-family homes

Home HeadQuarters and the Greater Syracuse Land Bank are already taking preliminary steps for the building process, Quaglia said.

The Greater Syracuse Land Bank is seeking lots to build on that are close to schools or parks, said Katelyn Wright, executive director of the land bank. Not only will this increase the value of surrounding homes, but it will also boost the desirability and safety of the neighborhood, she said.

“Syracuse is covered in vacant lots and abandoned buildings that bring down the value of homes in surrounding neighborhoods,” Wright said. “Adding something like the new construction will not only increase neighbors’ home values, but the value of what you are selling will go up as well.”

To read the full article click HERE

Syracuse to revive neighborhoods with 200 new homes for low-income buyers, renters

Syracuse, N.Y. – The city plans to build 50 new houses for first-time, low-income homebuyers in the next two years, according to Syracuse housing officials.

A second part of the plan would add another 75, two-family rental homes to the city. The total plan would create 200 new, street-level homes throughout Syracuse in the next few years.

To read the full article click HERE

Land bank seeking developers for 'neighborhood-scale' project in Albany's South End

The Albany County Land Bank Corp. is taking the next step to redevelop a four-block area of vacant land and abandoned homes in Albany's South End neighborhood.

The land bank wants to partner with developers interested in building new or renovated housing and retail shops in an area from Broad Street to Elizabeth Street and from Second Avenue to Third Avenue.

The area covers approximately 4 acres and includes 86 parcels. Of those parcels, 67 are owned by either the land bank or the city, representing about 3 acres. They're mostly vacant lots and a handful of empty buildings.

"What we’re really striving for here is to do a neighborhood-scale development," said Adam Zaranko, executive director of the land bank. "A whole, thought-out development project with mixed use, mixed income, rental and owned."

To read the full article click HERE

Falls receives state grant funds for blight fight

In an effort to help curb blight and enhance Western New York neighborhoods, the New York State Attorney General's Office on Friday announced the award of $2.7 million in grant funding to three cities, including Niagara Falls. 

Attorney General Letitia James visited Niagara Falls City Hall on Friday where she announced the local award, which is part of the state's Cities for Responsible Investment and Strategic Planning (Cities RISE) program, which was established in April 2017 in response to the foreclosure crisis. Of the total $2.7 million, Niagara Falls will receive $882,625.

To read the full article click HERE

The ‘Notice’ Starts A Sad Process

Today, there is another alternative which can help rejuvenate old housing stock — the property can be put into what is called a “Land Bank.” Sometimes this enables a potential buyer in purchasing and restoring a house. It also might enable a non-profit organization, like Habitat for Humanity, come in, take ownership and make needed restoration and repairs. If the County gives property to the Land Bank, County taxpayers eat all of the back taxes.

What the whole issues highlights is that property taxes, especially in a State like New York, are high. They are a major revenue source for both local governments and school districts. When somebody fails to pay them, that underlying cost doesn’t go away. It just gets shifted to everyone else already paying their own property taxes.

To read more the full commentary click HERE

Governors Motor Inn has a buyer at $150K

Governors Motor Inn — once a swank gathering spot but a boarded-up eyesore since a fire in 2010 — has a buyer at last. The Albany County Land Bank announced this week that it has reached an agreement with the owners and operators of Store Away Self Storage to purchase the building on Western Avenue near Carman Road for $150,000. 

The buyer plans to open a self-storage building there, to include indoor temperature-controlled units as well as drive-up units, said Adam Zaranko, the land bank’s executive director. 

To read the full article via the Altamont Enterprise click HERE

An eyesore finally gets demolished in Schenectady

The broken-down apartment building at 16 Jefferson St. was demolished by the Capital Region Land Bank on Monday, ridding Schenectady's East Front Street neighborhood of a major nuisance. 

Vacant for years, covered with vines, with piles of garbage piling up in the back of the property, the building was a good example of the dispiriting blight that afflicts almost every neighborhood in the city of Schenectady. 

It was also, I learned, a good example of the challenges involved in addressing derelict properties. 

To read the full article via the Daily Gazette click HERE

Symposium seeks to beat back ‘zombies,’ grow sustainable housing

It sounds like a scene from a scary Halloween movie: Neighborhoods are plagued by abandoned, dangerously dilapidated houses that threaten safety, attract crime and sap community spirit. 

In fact, so-called “zombie homes” – often left vacant and unmaintained during prolonged foreclosure proceedings – are a serious problem that drew experts from academia, government and nonprofit organizations to Cornell Oct. 23-24 for a symposium focused on revitalizing afflicted communities across New York state.

To read the full article via the Cornell Chronicle click HERE

Banking on Recovery - Land banking is a creative tool to convert abandoned and vacant properties into affordable housing.

New York State’s economy is being attacked by “zombies.” So begins testimony submitted by the New York Land Bank Association at the 2019 Joint Legislative Hearing on Economic Development. “They can be found in just about every community in New York State, hiding in plain sight among occupied buildings and well-maintained lots, consuming municipal resources, depressing property values, reducing tax revenue, and harming surrounding residents.”

These zombies? Vacant properties.

To read the full article via the River Hudson Valley Newsroom click HERE