RCP students create a new property scoring metric for the City of Duluth, showcasing their final project to stakeholders.
Aging buildings left in disrepair while affordable homes remain scarce.
This is a familiar situation for many cities as they try to attract and support a growing population. It’s a particular challenge for the City of Duluth, where nearly 75 percent of housing units are more than 46 years old and nearly 44% are more than 76 years old.
“The State average construction date of housing is 1975, I believe, and the national average is 1976,” Duluth Fire Department Deputy Chief Jon Otis said. “But [in] Duluth, the average built age of our housing is 1946. So we're talking 30 years older on average infrastructure.”
Otis has seen the effect blighted buildings have on residents and his fellow firefighters when aging homes become a hazard. While Duluth has been trying to supply more affordable housing, many residential buildings in poor condition are eventually being torn down rather than repaired, often to make way for much more expensive housing.
In the past, City of Duluth staff identified properties for demolition using a survey to score property conditions. Now, City staff want a new scoring metric that identifies properties for rehabilitation, which would preserve needed naturally occurring affordable housing in the community.
“We’ve got a really aged infrastructure,” Otis said, “and we wanted to be able to come up with a tool that we could use and go border to border within our city, and score every residential property.”
Partnership
In 2023, The City of Duluth applied to the Resilient Communities Project (RCP) at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities for research support to address the issue. RCP staff brought the project to Dr. Nicola Lowe’s Master of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) capstone course in spring 2024, and recruited a team of three graduate students to tackle the challenge as part of their final project.
[The survey for Duluth can allow] City staff to target funding in the areas that need it the most while protecting individual property-level data.
The City requested that students create and pilot a new scoring metric that would help city staff better understand the relationship between blighted properties and the geography of Duluth by integrating the data with the City’s GIS software. The “windshield” survey tool the capstone team created can be used by staff, or even community volunteers, to assess a building from the sidewalk in a matter of minutes, saving City employees valuable time.
After completing the survey questions, the metric produces a total score for each property, which could fall into mild, medium, or severe disrepair categories. Those buildings in the mild to medium categories might be good candidates for rehabilitation grant programs. Using the survey citywide can also create a composite score for entire neighborhoods, allowing City staff to target funding in the areas that need it the most while protecting individual property-level data.
The Result
The project gave University of Minnesota graduate students real world experience and the opportunity to work with different departments and divisions within the City of Duluth.
In early 2024, the student capstone team conducted a literature review on how other municipalities have addressed similar issues, including national best practices for addressing blighted properties, property scoring metrics used in other cities, and data from Duluth’s existing property scoring metric. Based on their research and interviews, the students created a first draft of the tool at the end of February.
In March, the students traveled to Duluth to conduct a pilot test of the metric, focusing on the Lincoln Park and Central Hillside neighborhoods. The goal of the pilot test was to determine what aspects of the metric needed to be adjusted, added, or removed.
After the site visit, the student team integrated the metric into ESRI’s ArcGIS Online Survey123 tool so City inspectors could enter their data digitally from their smart phones or tablets while in the field. In early May, the student team gave their final presentation about development and use of the tool to Duluth staff and stakeholders. This presentation included a demonstration of the GIS mapping tool and an overview of findings from their deployment of the tool in the field.
Over the summer, RCP hired a Summer Scholar to continue work on the project, adapting the scoring metric to be used to assess commercial properties, further piloting the metric in the city of Duluth, and refining the tool to better capture information City staff were interested in. The Summer Scholar also created a training manual and video tutorial for how to use the tool, enabling City staff or volunteers to accurately and consistently deploy the scorecard and the GIS software in the field.
The project gave participating University of Minnesota graduate students invaluable real world experience, as well as the opportunity to work and network with staff from different departments and divisions within the City of Duluth.
Looking Ahead
Implementing the scoring system will allow Duluth staff to understand which neighborhoods would benefit from reinvestment to preserve affordable housing and commercial properties. Though the City hasn’t had the resources to implement the students’ project across the entire city, they hope to in the near future.
“It comes down to funding and staffing issues now,” Otis said.
The City hopes property rehabilitation will lead to naturally occurring affordable housing and help their community grow. Affordable housing would allow employers to recruit essential workers like doctors, nurses, and school teachers, who may not be able to rent or purchase homes in the city as housing prices increase nationwide. With the accessibility of the GIS-based scoring metric and the training manual to orient users, RCP has provided the City of Duluth with the tools it needs to help preserve, not tear down, its aging housing stock and commercial properties.
This story was written by Maximus Jennings, RCP Student Storyteller and Communications Assistant