Gregg Lombardi - Executive Director
Kansas City is on the cutting edge nationally on the issue of how to reduce the number of abandoned properties in the city’s urban core and Legal Aid of Western Missouri’s Economic Development team is playing a key role in that work.
In the last week, there have been two articles in the Kansas City Star discussing Legal Aid’s partnerships with the city, neighborhood associations, law firms, banks and others to turn blighted, abandoned property into high quality, occupied housing. The first dealt with beneficiary deeds that keep money (in the form of home equity) that is desperately needed in the urban core, in the urban core.
The second was on the front page of the Star yesterday morning and dealt with an initiative conceived by the Post-Foreclosure Task Force, which Legal Aid’s Michael Duffy leads and in which the city is a close partner. The idea is to get local banks to provide financing for high quality rehabbers to rehab many more abandoned properties than they are able to do now. You may have seen this on TV as well.
This is exciting work that can make a gigantic difference in increasing property tax revenues, decreasing crime and, most importantly, improving the quality of life in the city’s urban core.
We have a lot of great partners in this work including, just to name a few—city manager Troy Schulte, Council members Ed Ford and Cindy Circo (and really the entire City Council), John Wood and David Park who lead the city’s efforts to address abandoned and dangerous buildings in the urban core, and neighborhood leaders too many to mention.
In the coming year, I’m hoping that you’ll hear more about the expansion of these excellent projects.
Showing posts with label Michael Duffy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michael Duffy. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
Friday, March 1, 2013
From Eyesore to Asset: Neighborhoods Win
Gregg Lombardi - Executive Director
Like so many other Legal Aid projects, even though the Economic Development team is doing fantastic work, very few people in the area know about it. The article in the Star will help change that and, by doing so, will help solidify the funding that we get for this work from the City and from private foundations for the team’s work. It will also help us make a strong case for increased funding for this important work in years to come.
In case you missed it, there was an excellent article on the
front page of the Kansas City Star this morning highlighting the community
development work that is being done by Legal Aid’s Economic Development team,
including: Michael Duffy, Jeff Williams, and Ron Nguyen, along with former
Legal Aid attorneys Gillian Ruddy and Kendra Mosley.
As the article shows, the work that Michael, Jeff and
Ron are doing, now with Jennifer Wieman, Rachel Hogan and Peter Hoffman joining
in, is on the cutting edge nationally in fighting urban core blight caused by
abandoned housing.
Like so many other Legal Aid projects, even though the Economic Development team is doing fantastic work, very few people in the area know about it. The article in the Star will help change that and, by doing so, will help solidify the funding that we get for this work from the City and from private foundations for the team’s work. It will also help us make a strong case for increased funding for this important work in years to come.
Thanks and congratulations again to Michael, Jeff, Ron, Gillian, Kendra,
Jennifer, Peter, and Rachel for the recognition for jobs well done.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Legal Aid's Fight to Re-purpose West High School
Gregg Lombardi - Executive Director
31 years ago this month, the Kansas City Missouri School
District closed West High School. Ever since the District closed West,
Michael Duffy, who leads Legal Aid’s Economic Development team, has been
fighting to either get it re-opened or repurposed.
Thanks in good part to Michael’s work and the work of the
many other people and organizations that Michael has partnered with, Kansas
City’s West Side has been revitalized and is now a wonderfully vibrant
community. Through all
this time, however, West High has been a decaying eye sore in the middle of the
neighborhood. Still, Michael has never given up the fight to get West
High redeveloped.
Five years ago, Michael and Westside Housing Organization
(WHO) approached the District with an acquisition and financing proposal that
would have redeveloped the building as a mixed use apartment complex with
low-income and market rate apartments. A similar project that Michael
helped create nine years ago at Villa Del Sol on the West Side is a national
model for urban core redevelopment. The District, however, turned down
the Michael’s West High School redevelopment proposal three times.
Finally, last night, with the building in much worse
condition than it was five years ago, the District preliminarily accepted a
new, similar plan that Michael and WHO put together. Again, the project
would be mixed use revitalization of the buildings and will require Michael and
WHO to assemble roughly $40 million in funding to make it work.
I am
confident, that they are up to the task. The result will be one of the
biggest improvements in the urban core of Kansas City in a long time.
Congratulations to Michael, his partners at WHO and to everyone else who has
worked on this project.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Legal Aid's Longtime Employees
by Gregg Lombardi, Executive Director
One of the greatest resources that Legal Aid has in representing our clients is the experience and leadership of our staff. We have nine attorneys and one support staff member in a broad range of practice areas who have been with Legal Aid for more than 30 years. And we have another 15 staff members who have been with us for more than 20 years.
What’s more, not only are our staff experienced, they have stayed on the cutting edge of their areas of expertise. Many are nationally or regionally recognized as some of the best attorneys in their fields. So, regardless of whether our clients need help with Medicaid or SSI issues, public housing problems, immigration questions, foreclosure prevention or help in eradicating urban blight. We have talented, experienced casehandlers to help them.
At this year’s Justice for All Luncheon on June 15, we’ll be honoring the Legal Aid veterans who have been with us for more than 30 years. They are:
Morris Dees, the co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center will be our speaker. Please join us if you can. It will be a great event.
Visit http://www.lawmo.org/JFA_MorrisDees.htm to reserve or purchase tickets. Please contact Karen Cutliff at kcutliff@lawmo.org with questions.
One of the greatest resources that Legal Aid has in representing our clients is the experience and leadership of our staff. We have nine attorneys and one support staff member in a broad range of practice areas who have been with Legal Aid for more than 30 years. And we have another 15 staff members who have been with us for more than 20 years.
What’s more, not only are our staff experienced, they have stayed on the cutting edge of their areas of expertise. Many are nationally or regionally recognized as some of the best attorneys in their fields. So, regardless of whether our clients need help with Medicaid or SSI issues, public housing problems, immigration questions, foreclosure prevention or help in eradicating urban blight. We have talented, experienced casehandlers to help them.
At this year’s Justice for All Luncheon on June 15, we’ll be honoring the Legal Aid veterans who have been with us for more than 30 years. They are:
Effie Day (Medicaid and other state public benefits)
Suzanne Gladney (Immigration)
Michael Duffy (Community Development)
Bill Shull (Managing Attorney Warrensburg Office)
Jane Worley (Public Housing and private landlord-tenant issues)
Julie Levin (Public Housing and private landlord-tenant issues)
Susan Kephart (Foreclosure prevention)
Sam McHenry (Employment and guardianship issues)
James Marshall Smith (Federal benefits)
Yolanda Hernandez (Bilingual legal secretary)
These seasoned advocates are also great teachers and are bringing along many talented newer attorneys at Legal Aid to follow in their footsteps.
Morris Dees, the co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center will be our speaker. Please join us if you can. It will be a great event.
Visit http://www.lawmo.org/JFA_MorrisDees.htm to reserve or purchase tickets. Please contact Karen Cutliff at kcutliff@lawmo.org with questions.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Post-Foreclosure Task Force Makes a Difference
Gregg Lombardi, Executive Director
Some times, when you have good, practical problem-solving skills you can make a giant difference.
A great example of this is the problem solving work that Legal Aid’s Michael Duffy and the Post-Foreclosure Task Force that he leads has been doing lately. One of the projects that the Task Force has been working on lately has been to assist local community development corporations (“CDC’s”) in overcoming obstacles to their use of $7 million in federal stimulus funding that was provided to Kansas City to rehab blighted, foreclosed properties in the City’s urban core. The City sub-contracted with the CDC’s to do this work.
This funding presents a race against the clock. If the developers fail to have commitments to use the funding by October 1 this year, all of the uncommitted funding must to be returned to the federal government. On the other hand, if the funding is committed to rehabbing specific houses by October 1, then, when the houses are sold, the proceeds will be placed in a revolving fund to rehab more houses. So, if properly and timely used, the funding will actually do much more than $7 million of rehab work.
One of the major obstacles that the CDC’s found in doing this work was that HUD policies for the project prohibited them from spending any money toward the purchase of a house until their plans for renovation of the house had been approved by the City. This process takes approximately 6 weeks and sometimes longer. HUD’s policy meant that the CDC’s would often find a house, negotiate a price with the seller, then having tentatively established a price, prepare plans and submit them to the City for approval. Once the plans were approved, they would return to the seller, only to find that the house had already been sold.
Not only was this a tremendous waste of resources for the not-for-profit developers, it threatened to keep them from meeting their October 1 deadline. Furthermore, the problem, in theory, was easily solvable. If the CDC’s could offer the owners of the houses some sort of contingency or option agreement, that provided the sellers with minor compensation (say $500 per house) in exchange for a commitment to sell the property if City approval came through (which it consistently has), then they could eliminate the risk of the house being sold during the approval process. HUD’s policies for the project, however, prohibited this, not only in K.C., but nationally.
Michael brought this problem to the attention of the Post-Foreclosure Task Force, which includes members of the City Council of Kansas City, representatives of the Federal Reserve, the FDIC, neighborhood organizations, bankers and other major stakeholders who have been impacted by the blight that foreclosures have caused in Kansas City’s urban core. It’s essentially a think-tank for reducing the blight caused by foreclosures.
The Post-Foreclosure Task Force saw the solution to the problem and negotiated with HUD attorneys in Washington for a change of the policy. After lengthy debate, HUD agreed to a change in the rules, nationally. This means that the CDC’s in Kansas City will be able to use all of the $7 million in federal stimulus funding to rehab foreclosed properties and use the proceeds from the sale of those properties to create a revolving fund to rehab even more properties. And developers around the country will be able to do the same. The result is that tens of millions of dollars, and perhaps hundreds of millions dollars, can now be used nationally to rehab blighted urban core properties.
That is good problem solving with a great impact.
Some times, when you have good, practical problem-solving skills you can make a giant difference.
A great example of this is the problem solving work that Legal Aid’s Michael Duffy and the Post-Foreclosure Task Force that he leads has been doing lately. One of the projects that the Task Force has been working on lately has been to assist local community development corporations (“CDC’s”) in overcoming obstacles to their use of $7 million in federal stimulus funding that was provided to Kansas City to rehab blighted, foreclosed properties in the City’s urban core. The City sub-contracted with the CDC’s to do this work.
This funding presents a race against the clock. If the developers fail to have commitments to use the funding by October 1 this year, all of the uncommitted funding must to be returned to the federal government. On the other hand, if the funding is committed to rehabbing specific houses by October 1, then, when the houses are sold, the proceeds will be placed in a revolving fund to rehab more houses. So, if properly and timely used, the funding will actually do much more than $7 million of rehab work.
One of the major obstacles that the CDC’s found in doing this work was that HUD policies for the project prohibited them from spending any money toward the purchase of a house until their plans for renovation of the house had been approved by the City. This process takes approximately 6 weeks and sometimes longer. HUD’s policy meant that the CDC’s would often find a house, negotiate a price with the seller, then having tentatively established a price, prepare plans and submit them to the City for approval. Once the plans were approved, they would return to the seller, only to find that the house had already been sold.
Not only was this a tremendous waste of resources for the not-for-profit developers, it threatened to keep them from meeting their October 1 deadline. Furthermore, the problem, in theory, was easily solvable. If the CDC’s could offer the owners of the houses some sort of contingency or option agreement, that provided the sellers with minor compensation (say $500 per house) in exchange for a commitment to sell the property if City approval came through (which it consistently has), then they could eliminate the risk of the house being sold during the approval process. HUD’s policies for the project, however, prohibited this, not only in K.C., but nationally.
Michael brought this problem to the attention of the Post-Foreclosure Task Force, which includes members of the City Council of Kansas City, representatives of the Federal Reserve, the FDIC, neighborhood organizations, bankers and other major stakeholders who have been impacted by the blight that foreclosures have caused in Kansas City’s urban core. It’s essentially a think-tank for reducing the blight caused by foreclosures.
The Post-Foreclosure Task Force saw the solution to the problem and negotiated with HUD attorneys in Washington for a change of the policy. After lengthy debate, HUD agreed to a change in the rules, nationally. This means that the CDC’s in Kansas City will be able to use all of the $7 million in federal stimulus funding to rehab foreclosed properties and use the proceeds from the sale of those properties to create a revolving fund to rehab even more properties. And developers around the country will be able to do the same. The result is that tens of millions of dollars, and perhaps hundreds of millions dollars, can now be used nationally to rehab blighted urban core properties.
That is good problem solving with a great impact.
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