metro >> on the cover Blight Buster Erica Ward Gerson heads the Detroit Land Bank, renewing Detroit one home at a time. Sam Gringlas I Special to the Jewish News CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 Building An Institution A corporate and finance lawyer by trade, Gerson didn't know much about blight busting or land banks — the public enti- ties created to acquire, manage and devel- op abandoned properties. But over the next year, she worked with Duggan to con- sult other land banks, interview experts, sort through best practices from around the country and compile an 80-page policy paper that ultimately informed a central pillar of his policy platform. Two days after declaring victory last November, he called Gerson and told her it was time to implement the policy she helped compose. Gerson, who lives in Bloomfield Hills and is a member of Congregation Shaarey Zedek in Southfield and Temple Beth El in Bloomfield Township, already had retired from Skadden Arps, where she practiced law for 30 years. Her husband, Ralph Gerson, a nephew of the late Bill Davidson and a director at Guardian Industries in Auburn Hills, said he wasn't surprised his wife took Detroit's new mayor up on his offer to appoint her chair of the Detroit Land Bank Authority. "When someone asks her to do some- thing that really has the potential to make a difference in a community like Detroit, I knew she would have a very hard time say- ing no," he said. In an interview with the IN, Duggan cited Gerson's background in law and experience as deputy director for domestic policy at the White House as key factors behind recruiting her for the project. "The complexity of the blight problem is amazing," he said. "You have HUD regu- lations, you've got banking regulations, you've got environmental regulations, and so I was looking for someone who could take this maze of complex regulations and make it into an understandable program to reuse the houses in the city:' With a shoestring staff of five people, Gerson started her tenure with the Land Bank writing purchase agreements and assisting with the other day-to-day tasks needed to get the operation moving dur- ing the administration's first month. Since then, the team has grown to a 65-person staff. For outside observers, perhaps the most 8 September 4 • 2014 impressive facet of the initiative is the speed at which the Land Bank has been able to implement a plan to tackle blight. Since starting the process in April, the Land Bank has auctioned 130 houses and closed on 40, generating $2.25 million in sales. That's no surprise for Larry Gold, CEO of the Children's Hospital of Michigan, who lauded Gerson's ability to understand complex issues, unpack them and execute a plan. "She moves between strategy and imple- mentation so easily," he said. This house on Euclid is one of 21,579 homes now owned by the Detroit Land Bank. How It Works Tackling blight in Detroit certainly requires both the strategy to chart an inventive plan and the agile machinery to produce results. To start, the problem is big. In Detroit, at least 48,000 homes are unoccupied, totaling about 13 percent of the city's housing stock. On top of a long-term population decline propelled by disappearing auto industry jobs and flight to the suburbs, foreclosures devastated dozens of stable neighborhoods when the economic down- turn pummeled Metro Detroit in 2008. To address those realities, the Land Bank's current model builds on a pro- cedure called nuisance abatement that Duggan first piloted as Wayne County Blight Buster on page 10 MOTOR CITY MAPPING *. Q About Contribute Training Sign in Oak Park Fitzgerald DETROIT iGr .;osse 4t, 0 ery e Ex plore Q Search 0 Blows Woods .....Owed a 1,..1yOwned 376,001 properties surveyed Structures, Lots Structure Condition Structure Occupancy ■ port 218.870 Dearborn Heights lair 30.172 ■ Mut:lures 262273 DM poor 8.642 MI018:113.708 • sued demo:4471 • • occupied 202.734 maybe 10.836 unoccupied 40.671 - 11 ■ I=I ■ .-"05, Windsor ,,c....me ■ AIL _ Melvinda Allen Park Lincoln ♦,e I 0 Lots with dumping Structures with fire damage Structures needing boarding 6,123 6,886 27,820 IScreen shot of home page from Motor City Mapping