KCK picked for Bloomberg Philanthropies’ ‘What Works Cities’ initiative

Bloomberg Philanthropies, a charity affiliated with former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, has selected Kansas City, Kan., to participate in an initiative to improve government performance.

Bloomberg was announcing KCK’s inclusion in the What Works Cities program on Monday morning in New York. What Works Cities links cities in its program to one another and with a team of experts with Bloomberg Philanthropies to consult with local governments.

“What this is is bringing is the expertise of a big city to a medium-sized city,” said Mark Holland, mayor of the Unified Government of Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kan.

Kansas City was selected for the same program last year.

Holland wants to leverage the program to help KCK manage its longstanding problems with blighted and vacant housing.

According to Holland, KCK lost 60,000 residents between 1970 and 2000. That, he said, left a glut of vacant houses, some of which have been purchased by absentee investors who lease them to tenants or sell them on a contract for deed basis.

Contract for deed is a method of selling a house in which a buyer makes monthly payments directly to the seller; the buyer takes full ownership of the property when the sale price is paid in full. It can be an honest method of selling a house without getting a bank involved, but it often leads to abuse.

“In the hands of a scoundrel, it’s a payday loan on steroids,” Holland said.

Housing issues have contributed to a devaluation of property in KCK; Holland said the median value for a residential home in KCK is $67,000, while Johnson County stands at $210,000. (Those figures include owner-occupied residences and rental properties.)

Through What Works Cities, Holland wants to better understand how homes descend into blight and how the city can use data to combat the problem.

KCK has $34 million in aggregate unpaid property taxes across 6,000 properties. Holland estimates 80 percent of that sum is uncollectable, due in large part to unresponsive property investors or owners who opted to walk away from their properties. Holland would like to better learn how to go after back taxes that are more likely to be repaid.

“Let’s spend our time on what’s collectable,” he said.

This story was originally published June 13, 2016 at 6:05 AM with the headline "KCK picked for Bloomberg Philanthropies’ ‘What Works Cities’ initiative."