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PRIORITY GOAL #1 Community Revitalization OVERVIEW: Some Decatur neighborhoods have fallen into decline.What were once attractive and well-maintained,mostly owner-occupied,neighborhoods now experience urban blight.A significant number of properties in blighted urban core neighborhoods have transitioned to rentals,and in too many instances, landlords do not make investments in properties adequate for long-term maintenance;the number of vacant and uninhabitable houses is still too great.An exodus of population and commercial activity contributes directly to deterioration. Appropriate interventions differ from neighborhood to neighborhood;and neighborhood revitalization is a long process. For this reason,the City Council has settled on a list of targeted strategies and methods of measuring progress toward future recovery.In this way the council and the rest of the city can see what strategies are the most successful and those strategies that do not work. Forward progress has been made over the past four years toward this goal;but much work remains. The City's strategic roadmap has four key pillars: 1. Demolish whatever must be demolished because it cannot be salvaged 2. Repair and rehabilitate whatever structures can reasonably be salvaged 3. Use more aggressive code enforcement,property inspections,registrations and other enforcement strategies to improve the local building stock 4. Leverage private investment in the urban core with selective development of"catalyst" projects that are large and visible enough to spur adjacent improvement Using neighborhood revitalization metrics developed by staff in 2019,the city measures the effectiveness of the city's efforts,evaluates progress trends and shapes new policy strategies.The following five metrics were used in 2019 and are used as performance measures moving forward: • Changes in equalized assessed valuation by neighborhood • Comparative condition of the housing stock by neighborhood using the structure-by-structure evaluation methodology developed for this purpose in 2019 • Percentage of lots/area in each neighborhood that are vacant and unused • Comparative crime statistics by neighborhood • Percentage of homes that are owner-occupied by neighborhood Key Implementation Strategies (details for each strategy have been committed to writing and are available separately): 1. Repurposing land,envisioning alternative land uses,creating the kind of new and rehabilitated housing people want. 2. Give greater attention to corridor projects and other infrastructure improvements to catalyze community redevelopment 3. Incentivize people to remain and invest in the urban core. 4. Leverage private developer investments in the urban core to expand new land use opportunities 5. Integrate crime prevention strategies into community business and housing revitalization to advance safety and diversity initiatives Page 1 3