2000115-Strengthening-Communities-with-Neighborhood-Data

206 Strengthening Communities with Neighborhood Data
and partnerships are leveraged to inform neighborhood improvement
initiatives.
Early Days
Back in 2004, Neighborhood Progress, Inc. (NPI), a community development
corporation (CDC) intermediary in Cleveland, along with local
community development organizations, undertook a strategy called the
strategic investment initiative (SII). 1 SII was designed to target investments
in six Cleveland neighborhoods with the goal of market recovery
and stabilization. Neighborhoods chosen for funding under this initiative
were those with community assets that could be built upon—strong
anchor institutions, organizational capacity, and indications of market
strength or potential market recovery. Median sales prices, vacancy rates,
and homeownership rates from NEO CANDO were used to identify
signs of market strength. At the time NEO CANDO offered limited
parcel-level data—namely sales transactions and property characteristics
from the Cuyahoga County auditor—that were important but
not sufficient to assess the status of properties in these neighborhoods.
Instead, parcel-level data on property condition and vacancy status were
available via a Palm Pilot survey that had been administered in the six SII
neighborhoods. But the organizations involved in SII knew they lacked
other key pieces of information about properties, such as code violations
or whether the property was in foreclosure. These missing pieces could
be cobbled together with time and effort, but what became clear was the
need for this information to be integrated into one data system, eliminating
the time-consuming and cumbersome processes of retrieving data
from various data systems across county agencies. Having such a system
would require less time for acquiring data and allow more time for making
decisions about what to do with properties. With NEO CANDO, the
infrastructure necessary for a one-stop shop for parcel-level data was in
place, as was staff capacity to make it happen.
During the same time, many of Cleveland’s neighborhoods were
plagued with increasing numbers of vacant and abandoned properties.
Concerns were growing about the negative effects these properties would
have on the progress made in revitalizing and strengthening neighborhoods
over the previous decade. To address this problem, the National
Vacant Properties Campaign assessed the vacant and abandoned proper-