The City of Gary is one of the recipients of the Center for Community Progress’ second round of the competitive Technical Assistance Scholarship Program (TASP), alongside groups of local leaders in Dallas, Texas; Detroit, Michigan; and Trenton, New Jersey. Through TASP, the Center for Community Progress (Community Progress), a national nonprofit, will help local leaders develop new strategies to address property blight, vacancy and abandonment.
"The City of Gary's designation as a TASP recipient is huge for us because it coincides with the many efforts we are currently employing to eliminate blight in our community," said Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson. "The technical assistance that will be provided allows us to be more strategic with our initiatives and make visible impacts one neighborhood at a time."
Community Progress’ work in Gary will focus on data and how it can be used to inform policy and practice. Community Progress will examine, at a systems level, how property and other neighborhood-related data are being gathered. The organization will offer recommendations to the City’s Department of Redevelopment on how to improve data collection and how to use data to inform blight elimination and neighborhood stabilization strategies.
Gary was chosen through a competitive Request for Applications (RFA) process. Through the application process, cities requested assistance in one or more of TASP’s key issue areas. These include topics such as strategic code enforcement, data and information systems, and vacant land maintenance and reuse strategies. Proposed projects are reviewed on a range of criteria, including the potential for innovation that other cities can learn from, demonstrated leadership to implement reform and overall need.
“The team in Gary demonstrated strong leadership and a heartfelt commitment to developing new approaches to problem properties,” said Tamar Shapiro, president and CEO of the Center for Community Progress. “We’re just as committed to supporting their efforts and excited for this new partnership to get underway.”
Each selected city will receive assistance from a team of national experts. Technical assistance will take place throughout the first half of 2015 and may include, for example, staff training sessions, legal and policy analysis, and tailored reports with recommended changes. In addition to its work in Gary, the Center for Community Progress will assist Detroit with the early development of an open space plan, work in Dallas on policies related to code enforcement and advise Trenton on property data and information systems. Grant funding from the JPMorgan Chase Foundation provides the majority of the program’s support.
“Many of our country’s great cities struggle to find effective solutions to the blight that stands in the way of their recovery,” said Janis Bowdler, senior program director for community development at JPMorgan Chase. “With support from JPMorgan Chase Foundation, the Center for Community Progress will provide advice and assistance to help these cities develop customized plans to stabilize and revitalize their neighborhoods.”
Since its founding in 2010, the Flint, Michigan-based Center for Community Progress has provided technical assistance to more than 100 communities across 22 states. Community Progress launched TASP in early 2014 in response to two needs: first, the need to develop fresh approaches to problem properties that could become models for cities to replicate, and second, the need to provide individual cities with affordable, high-quality guidance in the fight to remediate blighted, vacant properties.
More information about the Technical Assistance Scholarship Program is available on the Center for Community Progress website.
About Center for Community Progress Founded in 2010, the Center for Community Progress is the only national 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization solely dedicated to building a future in which entrenched, systemic blight no longer exists in American communities. The mission of Community Progress is to ensure that communities have the vision, knowledge, and systems to transform blighted, vacant, and other problem properties into assets supporting neighborhood vitality. As a national leader on solutions for blight and vacancy, Community Progress serves as the leading resource for local, state and federal policies and best practices that address the full cycle of property revitalization, from blight prevention, through the acquisition and maintenance of problem properties, to their productive reuse. Major support for Community Progress is generously provided by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and the Ford Foundation.