Birmingham
Woodfin announces “100 houses in 100 days” neighborhood development program
The money will come from sales of property to DC BLOX and Shipt.
Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin announced Wednesday a new plan to address urban blight in the city, using funds from two recent economic development projects that generated millions in revenue for the city.
The program will spend $1.4 million to improve “100 homes in 100 days,” Woodfin said. The money comes from the sale of two city properties — one to DC BLOX to build a new data center in Titusville (which sold for $600,000), and a parking deck sold to grocery delivery company Shipt (which sold for $1 million).
The remaining $200,000 of those sales will go toward demolishing dilapidated structures.
The program will allocate that money toward rebuilding neighborhood houses, by request of low-income or senior-citizen homeowners. Each house can receive up to $10,000 for renovations from the city.
“Our plan is to bundle our work to transform entire blocks instead of renovating one home on a street, which would otherwise be surrounded by blight,” Woodfin said. “This reaffirms our commitment to giving all 99 neighborhoods a fresh start.”