Neighborhood Housing

Many older neighborhoods in Des Moines are filled with vacant lots and abandoned housing. When left unattended, they hurt neighborhoods by creating safety issues and lowering nearby property values. CCI's affiliated neighborhoods have worked with the City of Des Moines, private developers and local lenders to turn these liabilities into assets.

• In the spring of 2005, Fairgrounds Neighborhood residents began to take notice of numerous vacant and blighted properties in the area owed by Gary Oeth. Oeth had purchased the properties to rehab and turn into rental units, but he had too many properties and too few employees to rehab them at a sufficient rate.
  Fairground CCI members met with Oeth in June and gave him a list of about 10 properties that needed work and demanded he provide a timeline for their rehab. He agreed. At a follow up meeting in October, nearly all of the work had been completed on time and to the satisfaction of the residents.
  
  
• In a joint project, Des Moines CCI members in King-Irving Park and Ingleside Hills neighborhoods worked with the Iowa Finance Authority and developer Richard Helgeson to win approval for a 54-unit senior affordable living facility. The facility, at the corner of Martin Luther King and Forest Avenue, held it's grand opening in January 2005. MORE DETAILS
  
  
• Members in Ingleside Hills neighborhood are working with First American Bank and Brantley Built homes to make loans available for home improvement and to build in-fill housing in the neighborhood.
  
  
• When Brooks Elementary School closed in 1999, the neighborhood was left with an abandoned building on a 3.2 acre lot in the middle of the Fairground neighborhood. Fairground Neighbors, a CCI affiliated neighborhood group, approached the city with their idea – build affordable housing that will draw people into our neighborhood and turn a vacant lot into a centerpiece.
  
  Fairground Neighbors and the City worked with Community Housing Development Corporation to purchase the site and build homes that fit the character of the neighborhood.
  
  Today 14 of the 20 homes are completed -- helping transform the lot into something everyone can be proud of and helping families become home owners.
  
  
• King-Irving Park Neighborhood, a CCI-affiliated neighborhood, was instrumental in bringing 12 new affordable homes to the area with more new housing to be built in 2005. For many years, the King Irving neighborhood was more than 60% rental. This percentage has declined to less than 40% in recent years.

updated 8/17/05