Five Years of Progress

The Land Bank has made tremendous progress in the last five years.

When the Lucas County Land Bank was incorporated on August 31, 2010, it was easy to draw the conclusion that the new organization was formed to respond specifically to the ongoing foreclosure crisis that had gripped most of the United States and had hit midwestern cities like Toledo especially hard.

Indeed, when the housing bubble burst in 2008, it did not happen in a vacuum. The credit crisis that resulted from it was the primary cause of the Great Recession from which our community is still trying to recover.

While the Land Bank was created as a tool to help respond to the challenges caused by the foreclosure crisis, the reality is that the Land Bank would have been necessary even had the financial crisis never happened.

The forces that have contributed to our region’s decline – population shifts, trade agreements, corporate takeovers – were also at work in other cities, especially in the Great Lakes region. What happened to Toledo in the last 50 years is no different than what happened to Buffalo, Dayton, Akron, or Fort Wayne. In cities like Detroit and Cleveland, the decline was far worse.

The modern land bank movement was born from these forces about 15 years ago in Flint, Michigan, a city hit perhaps the hardest of any in the United States by the twin challenges of economic decline and urban blight. Armed with the tools these new land banks offered – the ability to acquire vacant and abandoned properties relatively quickly, and a funding stream to turn blight back into productive use.

The Lucas County Land Bank is proud to have been at the vanguard of this movement. When it formed five years ago, it was just the 2nd land bank in Ohio. Now there are 25 throughout the state, and the number is growing.

The Lucas County Land Bank has demolished vacant and abandoned homes that could not be saved, and it has worked with homeowners and others to renovate blighted structures that could. It has partnered with entrepreneurs to turn blighted commercial structures into centers of economic activity. It has transferred side lots to neighbors, provided homeowners with new roofs and low-interest house repair loans, and worked with community partners to create green space, community gardens, and an arboretum.

Over the last year, the Land Bank completed a first-of-its-kind survey of each of the roughly 122,000 parcels of land in Toledo, the goal of which is to provide decision-makers with the hard data needed to make wise investments in challenged neighborhoods.

The Land Bank has only been able to do all of this because of the skill of its dynamic staff, the dedication of its excellent Board of Directors, and its partnerships with community groups at the grassroots level who share a commitment to improving the quality of life in our neighborhoods.

In the end, that is why the Land Bank exists: to strengthen our community’s neighborhoods – and thereby increase property values – by finding new, productive uses for old, blighted eyesores.

Too often people make the mistake of thinking that the Lucas County Land Bank is about that vacant and abandoned house that needs to be demolished. It is not. The Land Bank exists to help the homeowner who lives next door to that abandoned house – to help her reclaim her neighborhood and reward the hard work she puts into her own home.

Communities like ours have faced challenges for many years – and will likely continue to face challenges for many years to come. The Land Bank certainly can’t solve all of Toledo and Lucas County’s problems, especially overnight.

But the Lucas County Land Bank can help be a small part of the solution, and we are committed to working with citizens and community groups who share our vision.

Wade Kapszukiewicz
Chairman
Lucas County Treasurer