This fall we welcome Katharine Nelson as CLiME's new Senior Research Fellow (bio below) and publish our recommendations on the use of land banks to the City of Newark. Work in progress for release later this fall includes a comprehensive housing needs assessment for Newark; Gatien Laurol's evaluation of institutional police reform ideas; Marilyn Rubin and Wendy Nicholson's equity analysis of New Jersey tax incentives; and the launch of a project on how the causal intersection between social determinants of health and disproportionate incidence of underlying health conditions reveals systemic racism in institutional policies (with Shannon Cohall).
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Katharine Nelson
CLiME Senior Research Fellow
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As CLiME’s Senior Research Fellow, Katharine (Katie) helps to oversee the Center’s various research projects.
Katie is currently completing her doctoral studies at the Bloustein School of Planning & Public Policy at Rutgers University. Her dissertation focuses on race and mortgage markets in Philadelphia, and explores the ongoing dependence of Black and Latinx families on the Federal Housing Administration’s (FHA) mortgage insurance program for homeownership. Katie is currently a Lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design, and teaches courses in housing, geographic information systems (GIS) and quantitative research methods.
Katie has published in a range of urban and policy journals, including Housing Policy Debate, Journal of Education Policy, and Journal of Urban Affairs. Her work on gentrification and schools, and on charter funding, has been featured in the Philadelphia Inquirer, on Shelterforce and in local public media. Katie’s research uses place-based inquiry and spatial analysis to try and understand and intervene in structurally unequal processes. Katie has strong technical expertise in GIS and statistical analysis including web-based technologies, spatial statistics, and raster processing.
Prior to starting her PhD, she helped to build and develop PolicyMap, a web-based data and mapping application that specializes in data for community development and policy. PolicyMap is now used widely by universities, governments and organizations throughout the country.
Katie loves to travel, play cards, and bake pies.
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Land Banks as Instruments of Equitable Growth:
CLiME’s Recommendations to the City of Newark
By Katharine Nelson, Senior Research Fellow, and David Troutt, Director
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Land banks are government-created institutions whose mission is to return vacant, abandoned and tax-delinquent properties into productive use. Land banks are empowered to acquire land, eliminate back taxes and tax liens attached to a property in order to create a clean title, maintain the land in compliance with local and state ordinances, and convey the property back into active use. As a mechanism for expediting the disposition of city-owned and/or abandoned properties, land banks can be a significant local government tool either for equitable growth or for more conventional economic development.
The land bank’s purpose follows the priorities of local decision makers, and equity is not a legislative requirement. However, land banks can be a key instrument of equitable governance because they allow cities more centralized authority to direct public resources for community planning, wealth creation, and housing stability where they are most needed. Equitable governance carries the potential to stimulate local community markets hobbled by underinvestment, spread resources to resource-poor areas, and ensure greater fairness for disadvantaged community members. Land banks used in combination with other tools of equitable development can have even greater impact.
In July 2019, New Jersey created the necessary enabling legislation for New Jersey communities to create land banks. Earlier this year, the Newark City Council passed ordinances establishing the City’s land bank. Pending approval, the Newark Land Bank Corporation will be administered by Invest Newark, a non-profit development corporation that manages many of the City’s development efforts, with an initial annual operating budget of $3 million dollars that is expected to rise to as much as $5 million in subsequent years. Properties transferred to Invest Newark will be owned by Invest Newark unless and until they are pursuant to the broad grant of land bank authority. Most in the first group of about a hundred properties are small, non-contiguous lots with and without existing structures on them, a characteristic that affects the kinds of uses (e.g., 2-4 unit residential, commercial, light industrial etc.) that may be possible.
The Rutgers Law School Center on Law, Inequality and Metropolitan Equity (CLiME) has examined land banks as a tool of equitable growth and offers the following recommendations to Newark and other cities on the application of equitable principles that will assure that land banks have the greatest public benefit.
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PLACE and Power:
Pathways to Racial and Economic Equity
Tuesday, Nov. 10 at
4 p.m.
Scholars, authors and policy activists David Troutt and Thad Williamson will discuss the pathways to racial and economic equity in cities and in the nation as a whole, with a focus on the effects of local and regional housing, employment and anti-poverty policies.
The event is the third in the “PLACE and Power” series of virtual conversations exploring connections between human place-based relationships and the law and politics of environmental governance, including governance of the built environment.
Sponsored by the Program in Law, Communities and the Environment (PLACE); the Virginia Environmental Law Journal; and the Virginia Environmental Law Forum.
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Visit the CLiME website - www.clime.rutgers.edu - for all of our news, research updates and publications.
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