SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WAND) - A Harvard Fellow who worked with Springfield on ways to streamline its processes for identifying and addressing vacant and dilapidated housing has released her report. 

Since earlier in 2021, Megan Willis-Jackson began helping the city as part of the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative. The initiative provides tools to help city leaders have high-performing and innovative cities.

Willis-Jackson was focused on run-down properties and examined how the city could address housing issues at a faster pace. 

Her report, which can be viewed in full in a PDF document attached to this story, made the main suggestion of calling on Public Works to develop a proactive inspection process instead of a reactive one. She said Springfield's processes currently involve a "hybrid of proactiveness and reactiveness" and added there are foundations in place for building a "solidly proactive process." 

She thanked all of the officials who helped give insights and thoughts on improvements. She added inefficiencies or deficiencies are not the fault of city staff, as "they perform their jobs diligently and with care under the current existing processes." Recommendations are presented with the hope of making the processes more effective and to "ultimately lessen the burden of abandoned housing on the whole city." 

Some of her main suggestions included: 

  • Having windshield inspections of all of Springfield conducted at least every six months and possibly more frequently. 
  • Creating an automated system to establish a record trail in Cityworks when housing inspectors are checking with building inspectors about whether or not a structure is vacant, making it easier for records to be accessed and making sure nothing is lost in translation in emails. 
  • Developing a scorecard to allow for the severity of blighted properties to be rated with consistent criteria. Willis-Jackson noted a scorecard helped New Orleans better determine if vacant buildings should be demolished or sold after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. 
  • Shortening the amount of time a property owner can have a property registered as vacant from three years to one year, which Willis-Jackson said will help ensure corrective actions taken by an offending property owner happen sooner. Typically, she said cases are commonly referred to legal at the end of three years to obtain a court order to force action, and the expiration of registration in those cases is what triggers action on the part of property owners.

Recommended changes to legal processes and Office of Planning and Economic Development processes are also included in the report. 

Springfield Mayor Jim Langfelder welcomed Willis-Jackson's perspective and believes the report has valuable insight. 

“Homes build the character of a neighborhood and that is why one of my priorities is working to build our neighborhoods back up, by restoring homes versus tearing them down. The first step to getting there is to improve City processes as it relates to vacant and dilapidated properties,” said Langfelder. “This report is informative and outlined clearly ways we can improve our processes at the City to help keep our neighborhoods intact and thriving.”

“It is a rare opportunity to have someone with an outside perspective and Megan’s skillset come in and focus solely on improving a process. We are grateful for her work,” Public Works Director Nate Bottom said. “One recommendation was improving our Building Registration process, and we have taken the first step to placing these online in an interactive way. In the coming weeks additional updates will be made to help residents and council members have a clearer picture of registered properties throughout Springfield.”