Information collected from the survey will help city officials determine how to allocate demolition and rehabilitation funds and set project priorities.
“We want to see which neighborhoods have improved in condition, which ones stayed the same and, given the Great Recession, which ones have slipped,” said Aaron Sorrell, Dayton’s director of planning and community development.
Dayton City Commissioners this month approved spending $140,000 to hire the Thriving Communities Institute to oversee a citywide property survey.
The group will assess, map and photograph every structure and empty lot in the city to create a database containing information about the physical conditions of all properties.
Field surveyors will visually inspect parcels and record information about property conditions while walking in public right-of-ways and sidewalks.
“A citywide survey will be an invaluable asset as we work to strengthen and modernize housing stock,” Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley said.
Surveyors will work in two-person teams and will wear bright orange T-shirts featuring the Thriving Communities Institute logo and will read “Dayton Property Survey.”
They will score the condition of every parcel, indicate if they are occupied or vacant and will record the type of property. Team members will note if structures have damaged windows, doors, roofs, garages or other maintenance needs.
The city has struggled to get an accurate estimate of the number of dilapidated and vacant structures in its neighborhoods, because data from the U.S. Census is not up-to-date and data from the U.S. Postal Service is not precise.
The city has demolished more than 2,000 structures since 2009, and the city wants to see if those removals and other city-funded improvement projects have benefited other properties in those neighborhoods, Sorrell said.
The city may have to modify its neighborhood revitalization strategies if blight-removal activities and investments are not having a stabilizing effect and causing neighbors to invest in their properties, Sorrell said.
“The benefit of something like this is to help our outcome-performance measurements, so we can do a better job of measuring the impact of the programs we run, like down-payment assistance, owner-occupied rehab and code enforcement efforts,” Sorrell said.
The city conducted a similar assessment in 2008. The survey should take about 12 weeks to complete.
Thriving Communities Institute is run through the Western Reserve Land Conservancy. The organization has completed citywide property surveys in Akron, East Cleveland, Lorain, Sandusky and Oberlin.
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