Blight Elimination Program Funds
Statewide: $75 million
Division 3 (includes Muncie): $19,897,500
Muncie: $2.88 million
Leftover to be awarded: $8,429,500
After winning $2.88 million of federal money to remove abandoned properties, Muncie city officials await instructions from the state on what to do next.
“We have a webinar with the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority and they will be sharing with us what the next steps are,” said Terry Whitt Bailey, director of the Muncie Office of Community Development.
The funds are part of the Hardest-Hit Fund established by the U.S. Department of the Treasury for 18 states that were most affected by the 2008 recession. Indiana was given more than $221 million, which has been overseen by the IHCDA.
The IHCDA then created the Blight Elimination Program that allocated $75 million of the state’s award to helping Indiana counties and cities demolish or buy abandoned and blighted properties.
Indiana was split into six division areas. The division that Muncie is in received $19,897,500 to disperse, with $2.88 million going to Muncie.
“Not only is it $2.88 million, but we’ve received the most money in our division,” Bailey said.
The award did not come without administrative work. The application Muncie submitted was large enough that the Community Development Office had to store it in a milk crate, Bailey said.
“We started working on this back in October, so this is not something we just thought about in the last couple of weeks,” she said. “It wasn’t just a ‘kite in the sky’ proposal, we had to have addresses. With those addresses, there were certain points with what was wrong with the property.”
According to the Indiana Foreclosure Prevention Network, Indiana has the highest percentage of abandoned properties in the country.
The abandoned homes in Muncie have been a long-time concern for the city, said Muncie Mayor Dennis Tyler.
“I’ve heard it from the first day I walked into office,” he said. “We knew this was an issue.”
The presence of so many abandoned properties produces risks for residents around them, Bailey said.
“I sometimes see it as an apple,” she said. “If you have a bad spot on an apple, it just continues to grow and bruise. So if you’ve got a bad property, it’s going to bring the property value for the rest of the neighborhood down. It might cause people to come and squat in those places or people to use it as a drug house, or even kids going in and playing in an unsafe space.”
Even though the funds are nearly secured to address these buildings, the city is required to show progress on the goals and present end uses for each of the properties to the IHCDA within 18 months.
Tyler said he would like to see more community gardens in place of the blighted homes to combat food shortages in the city.
“That’s something I’ve been thinking about for a year and a half to two years,” he said. “I think through this process and with some of our partners that have reached out to us in the past six months, I think you’re going to see the process begin to develop rather quickly.”
Even though plans for the funds have not been finalized, Bailey said she’s preparing to start applying for the next round of funding.
Muncie’s division still has $8,429,500 that has yet to be awarded, according to a notice from the IHCDA.
“We don’t have the details yet as to what we’re supposed to be doing, but we’re ready and we’ve been ready to do what’s next,” Bailey said.
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