Ravi Yalamanchi has seen hard times in Flint’s neighborhoods.
Facing a challenging housing market, Metro Community Development’s CEO for the past 20 years is helping lead the charge to repopulate high-vacancy areas and stimulate revitalization.
While the positive movement has been slow, Yalamanchi is hopeful for a citywide rebound. As Metro Community Development promotes home ownership programs and partnerships, the organization looks for encouraging numbers about new and returning residents during late fall and in 2017.
“I think it’s going to take a while to look at the data trends and it’s going to be closer to the end of this year and the beginning of next year to see if there are any changes in data points,” says Yalamanchi. “Number two is we’re going to have to look at new foreclosures and tax foreclosures to examine what the impact has been.”
Many values have decreased and a buyer can find a house for $15,000 to $20,000, but renovations would cost about $25,000, he says.
“If a new homeowner or an existing homeowner has a challenge, we are giving them $7,500 and the loan is forgiven, as long as they stay in the house for five years.” – Ravi Yalamanchi, CEO, Metro Community Development
Metro has contributed toward the expenses incurred by Flint residents who’ve stayed in their homes, committing $150,000 to a home repair program since last year. Yalamanchi realizes the effort is a relative drop in the neighborhood revitalization bucket, but some reports show residents struggling to maintain their current addresses might have new neighbors soon.
The number of houses sold in June increased by 11.1 percent compared with 2015 sales, and in the second quarter of 2016 sales increased 8.3 percent since the first quarter, according to realtor data. The rate of vacancies appears to have slowed, with 24.3 percent fewer homes for sale this summer than a year ago.
Still, concerns about the safety of residential water loom, Yalamanchi says, despite widely publicized efforts among multiple community and government partnerships to ensure that kitchen and bathroom taps are now safe to use after the recent emergency.
“I think that is causing the market to be very unstable,” he says. “What we’re trying to do is go forward beyond that issue and not keep harping on it. We have to move on, to stabilize the communities. The only way to do that is to reinvest.”
Metro Communities is making aggressive efforts to attract more partnerships with financial institutions, Yalamanchi says, like the investment from Indiana-based Federal Home Loan Bank. Federal Home Loan supports Metro’s downpayment assistance program, in which about 20 families have participated so far.
“If a new homeowner or an existing homeowner has a challenge, we are giving them $7,500 and the loan is forgiven, as long as they stay in the house for five years,” says Yalamanchi.
He’s also hopeful about a potential collaboration with the City of Flint to develop a revolving loan fund, through which mortgage fees paid by the community would be recycled into new lending. About $1.1 million in mortgages have been issued through a similar partnership through which Yalamanchi says residents in communities like Burton and Mt. Morris Township are seeing benefits.
“We’re hoping to enter into an agreement in a couple of months. That would be a pilot program,” he adds. “We want to build it over a period of four or five years.”
“Definitely for us it’s unique,” says Yalamanchi. “We started this program in partnership with Genesee County about four or five years ago.”
While Metro Communities serves all of Flint, among key target areas of support are the Mott Park and Glendale subdivisions near Kettering University.
“These areas were, at one time, sort of pristine and some of the best neighborhoods in the city, but they have changed from homeowners to a lot of rental,” says Yalamanchi. “We want to create some home ownership to help stabilize the community. We’ve been doing a lot of outreach in that area, so families will know, and they will come to us.”
Meanwhile efforts like those of the Genesee County Land Bank Authority’s demolition of Glen Acres Apartments on Flint’s north end are designed to encourage redevelopment in surrounding areas. The Glen Acres demolition will promote new green space, ridding the community of blight and environment-related concerns.
Joel Arnold, City of Flint blight management analyst, says the work of neighborhood volunteers can’t be underestimated in clearing the community of eyesores that otherwise discourage new residents.
“Flint has an outsized volunteer community, for a city of 100,000 people,” says Arnold. “We couldn’t do a quarter of what we do without neighborhood organizations, church groups, block clubs and programs like that.”
Meanwhile, Flint’s neighborhood advocates and organizations must act as ambassadors to help generate additional private investment, says Yalamanchi. Non-profits are supportive of housing efforts, and collaborations with the city show promise, but increased corporate presence has to move beyond the courting stage, he says.
“We hope those conversations will turn into real partnerships, so capital will flow into the city.”
Photos by Paul Engstrom
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