South Bend considering TIF district to revitalize neighborhoods

SOUTH BEND, Ind. (WNDU) – The City of South Bend has a plan to put some monetary momentum behind efforts to attract new single-family housing.

The plan targets a couple of neighborhoods where half of all housing lots are vacant. In the Lincoln and Kennedy Park neighborhoods there’s plenty of room for improvement, yet some reason for optimism.

The city itself owns up to its vacant lot problem. The city owns 100 of the uninhabited parcels.

“Being in a neighborhood with that high a vacancy rate, vacant lots, that isn’t good for anybody. It leads to unmowed grass, unshoveled show, less kids running around during the day, less kids in the schools,” said Joseph Molnar, South Bend’s assistant director of growth and opportunity.

One big thing the city has done to address the situation is build the Martin Luther King Dream Center, a place people would presumably want to live nearby.

The city also contracted a not-for-profit to build single-family homes on at least 92 of the vacant lots over the next five years.

Some feel the next logical step would be to create a Residential Housing Development, also known as a Residential TIF.

“That will essentially allow us to capture tax growth in a neighborhood, the Kennedy Park and Lincoln Park Neighborhoods where we’ve seen some new affordable housing go in. It’ll be able to capture that tax revenue from those houses and reinvest it right back into that neighborhood,” Molnar explained. “New sidewalks maybe, new houses, new trails, things like that.”

South Bend has plenty of experience using TIF districts to advance commercial and industrial development. The city has not used a Residential TIF, but the redevelopment commission Thursday seemed open to the idea as it passed a supporting resolution.

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