Improving Kids' Environment is a partner in the Citizen's Healthy Homes Initiative with the Concerned Clergy and the Citizen's Multi-Service Center.  As a partner, IKE wrote a Needs Assessment for the Kennedy-King Park Neighborhood on Indianapolis' Near Northeast Side.  The Needs Assessment was published on August 23, 2003. Back to Main Report

Indianapolis Citizen’s Healthy Homes Initiative

Kennedy-King Park Neighborhood Needs Assessment

Finding #3

Vacant Buildings Provide Promise and Blight

While the Indiana General Assembly acknowledges the threat posed by vacant buildings.  When it comes to vacant and boarded homes, residents see both promise and blight. 

The Blight:  Many of these homes have been boarded for years with virtually no maintenance.  The owners have effectively abandoned these homes and chosen not to invest in the community despite persistent enforcement actions by the Marion County Health Department.  Their decisions undermine the integrity of the neighborhood and the prospects for safe, healthy and affordable housing. 

For example, when asked to visit one of these homes, a realtor told a CHHI representative to take a crowbar to open the backdoor.  This advice was apparently common practice.  A photo from months before showed a board over the backdoor pried loose and the home open to the elements and intruders.

The home next door had two vacant homes towering over it on each side.  It was occupied in January.  By May it was boarded.  

The Promise:  In a neighborhood critically short of affordable housing, vacant homes provide an attractive fixer-upped for a young investor.  If rehabbed, these homes could provide critically needed safe, healthy and affordable housing to the community.  Several current and former residents seek to sustain the neighborhood by doing just that.  However, with limited resources, they struggle to get the work done in a timely manner.   Many homes stand half-completed.  In one vacant building, CHHI youth photographed a can of paint and a paintbrush resting in the sill of a missing window.  That was January.  In August, the window is still open and the can still there with the paintbrush.  These homeowners get little technical or financial assistance from the City.