Flint Gateway Initiative

These eight custom homes are built on formerly vacant lots acquired by Mission of Peace, a local faith-based Community Development Corporation, through its first collaboration with the Genesee County Land Bank. Through a combination of tax foreclosure reforms, the Michigan Land Bank Fast Track Act and amendments to the Brownfield Redevelopment Financing Act, the Genesee County Land Bank has obtained broad and flexible authority to acquire, manage, clear, demolish, rehabilitate and develop tax-foreclosed land. Using these powers, the land bank has acquired 3,400 parcels, cleaned thousands of empty lots and demolished hundreds of abandoned homes in just three years. The land bank helps preserve or develop affordable homes by, among other things, transferring foreclosed, tenant-occupied properties to nonprofit housing organizations and assembling hundreds of empty lots for city development projects, as well as local nonprofit and community organization projects.