Ohio Housing Finance Agency

Government Growing Wild: Is Sprawl Exacerbated by Jurisdictional Fragmentation?

By Bryan Grady, Research Analyst at the Ohio Housing Finance Agency An underappreciated element of what can make a location a good place to live - or not - is the regional governance structure: the number and configuration of counties, cities, townships, and special districts that comprise a metropolitan area. Across the country, there are substantial differences worth noting. I began looking at these issues when I was an intern at Greater Ohio ten years ago and now, as a doctoral candidate at Rutgers University and a research analyst at the Ohio Housing Finance Agency (OHFA), I am studying the impacts that these forces have on housing outcomes. I worked with Judd Schechtman, a land use attorney and colleague at Rutgers, on developing some preliminary findings regarding the role of fragmented local government in generating sprawl.

 

To operationalize such an amorphous topic, we employed data published in Measuring Sprawl and Its Impact, which defined sprawl as a lack of four characteristics – residential density, mixed-use development, strong economic centers, and connected streets – and computed an index that incorporated all four elements. (A newer version, based on similar methods, was published earlier this year.) With regard to measuring regional governance, we used the Metropolitan Power Diffusion Index (MPDI). In short, MPDI encapsulates both the density of governments (e.g. how many incorporated areas and districts exist for every 100,000 people) and their relative budgetary influence, with a value of 1 representing a unitary regional government and increasing values indicating more diffuse political authority. A handful of other variables were included in the work as statistical controls, including population, manufacturing employment, per capita income, and educational attainment.

A quantitative analysis across 77 regions nationwide found that fragmentation and sprawl were directly correlated with one another at a statistically significant level. This was particularly true when evaluating the residential density component of the sprawl index, as well as the economic concentration component. Why? As Judd and I wrote,

Exclusionary zoning, as practiced by small municipalities, is specifically conceived to limit residential density in order to keep home prices and tax revenues high; reduced fragmentation would seemingly reduce the incentives to maintain such policies. Similarly, every city in a fragmented metropolis attempts to leverage agglomeration effects in office space and retail to their own advantage, whereas a single municipality that dominates a region would be able to channel development into a smaller number of commercial centers.

In short, in a region where dozens of localities are left to zone with only their own constituents in mind, land use patterns that are economically and spatially suboptimal are the direct result. A more regional approach to land use planning is necessary to ensure that money and land are not wasted chasing artificially-created shortages of various types of development.

The full study is available here. If you have any questions, feel free to email Bryan Grady. Please note that any opinions herein are the author's, not those of OHFA or the State of Ohio.

The Neighborhood Initiative Program

Neighborhood Initiative Program

Overview of the Neighborhood Initiative Program

The Ohio Housing Finance Agency (OHFA) received approval from the U.S. Department of the Treasury to utilize up to $60 million of Ohio’s remaining Hardest Hit Funds (HHF) to assist with stabilizing local property values through the demolition of vacant and abandoned homes across Ohio.

The Neighborhood Initiative Program (NIP) is designed to stabilize property values by removing and greening vacant and abandoned properties in targeted areas in an effort to prevent future foreclosures for existing homeowners.

The Neighborhood Initiative Program (NIP) will fund strategically targeted residential demolition in designated areas within the state of Ohio. OHFA will partner with County Land Revitalization Corporations (“land banks”) or an entity that has signed a cooperative agreement with an established county land bank.

  • NIP will be available to the 17 Ohio counties that have an established land bank.
  • OHFA has issued a Request for Proposals from the state’s county land banks.
  • The program begins in early 2014 and concludes in 2017.

Technical Assistance

OHFA has contracted GOPC to advise OHFA and applicants on the implementation of the Neighborhood Initiative Program (NIP).

Assistance includes:

  • Consultation with applicants regarding best practices for the selection of neighborhoods and properties for the program
  • Strategic and technical advice to eligible applicants in responding to the RFP for the NIP

 


Best Practices for Strategic Demolition

The guidelines for the Neighborhood Initiative Program (NIP) are available on OHFA's website.

This webpage provides information and resources to assist applicants as they prepare their applications for NIP funding and implement their programs according to the NIP guidelines.

Program applicants must focus on:

  • Target areas
  • Demolition and greening of abandoned residential properties
  • Preventing further reduction in property values
  • Preventing possible foreclosure of existing residential homes

Below is GOPC's presentation on best practices for implementing the NIP program.

 

The following resources may be useful to NIP applicants and grantees: