One Community Update
February 28, 2025
Source: www.woodtv.com
The newly formed Grand Rapids Land Bank is focusing on affordable housing as it looks for ways to use many vacant properties in the city.
Sarah Rainero, the economic development director for the city, says the new land bank her department oversees can make a real impact.
“The goal with the land bank is to activate housing more and better, faster housing, and this authority will allow us to be a little more nimbler at the local level,” Rainero said.
Land banks are used to manage or sell abandoned, vacant or blighted properties.
“The land bank authorities really have the autonomy to manage, acquire, move property with the goal of activating, getting these properties back on the tax rolls,” Rainero explained.
It used to be that land banks in Michigan operated mostly at the state or county level. Detroit was the only city that had its own. The state land bank oversaw properties in Grand Rapids after the county voted to disband its land bank in December 2018.
Then in 2023, state lawmakers passed legislation that allowed Grand Rapids to have its own land bank. On Feb. 1 of this year, control of 107 properties was transferred from the state land bank to the city.
Some of those properties could be used for parks or purchased as a side lot by a neighboring property.
“Some of the lots are not buildable,” Rainero said. “We have an arrangement to manage those properties — snow removal, tree maintenance.”
But the goal for most of the properties is to help meet the need for affordable housing.
“We really want to be intentional about how these properties are being activated, people that are in the neighborhoods and that want to invest in their community,” Rainero said.
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