City: Evansville, Indiana

Reporting to: Senior Project Manager, Department of Metropolitan Development

The Challenge

As the city of Evansville, Indiana has grown, the area has seen significant disinvestment in and around the Center City. Many residents with a higher socioeconomic status have moved outside the city’s core to the more affluent East Side, eastern suburbs, or North Side—and development and funding have followed this shift. As a result, neighborhoods like Jacobsville, the Center City, and the South Kentucky Redevelopment Tax-Increment Financing district (TIF) have been left behind, marked by widespread abandoned buildings, blighted properties, outdated housing, and vacant lots. A 2023 socioeconomic study showed that roughly 46.7% of residents in these areas are members of minoritized groups—with 31% living in poverty. Meanwhile, according to the 2024 Housing Needs Study, Evansville must develop approximately 1,975 rental units and up to 2,784 for-sale units in the next five years to allay a housing crisis. To meet this need, Evansville will identify and map undeveloped land, abandoned buildings, and blighted properties. The city will also create a pipeline for developing, rehabilitating, or selling these spaces.

Since taking office in January 2024, Mayor Stephanie Terry has made neighborhood revitalization her top priority. In April, Mayor Terry contributed $250,000 in American Rescue Plan Act interest funds to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund—50% more than the previous administration’s allocation. These funds allowed the Department of Metropolitan Development (DMD) to increase the maximum amount for qualifying homeowners to request home repairs from $10,000 to $25,000. For 2025, the Affordable Housing Trust Fund includes a further $1 million allocation, which will allow Evansville to expand these efforts. The budget also includes a $500,000 allocation to the city’s Land Bank—up 50% from 2024—which will fuel efforts to demolish blighted structures and acquire vacant land for future development. Earlier this year, Mayor Terry launched the Block-by-Block cleanup program, which brings volunteers and city departments into the city’s most neglected neighborhoods to pick up trash, mow grass, trim trees, and increase public awareness of city services. In November 2024, Mayor Terry, the DMD, and the Evansville Building Commission announced the creation of Fight Blight, a new blight remediation program that will leverage $550,000 in American Recovery Plan Act interest funds to identify and rehabilitate blighted properties.

The fellow will work alongside the DMD and the Building Commission to create and implement a process for mapping, identifying, and cataloging properties within Evansville’s Neighborhood Revitalization Strategy Areas. The order of priority will be Center City, Jacobsville, and the South Kentucky Redevelopment TIF, with the understanding that the fellow may not be able to complete all areas in 10 weeks. This will serve as a pilot project which the fellow will hand off to the DMD to expand into a city-wide effort. The DMD will use the data collected by the fellow to promote development and advance revitalization throughout Evansville. The fellow’s efforts will directly aid in transforming disinvested neighborhoods into safe, stable, and vibrant communities.

The fellow will use key data points, stakeholder input, and established best practices to answer the following key questions:

• What land within the targeted revitalization areas can be rehabilitated as housing?
• How can the city collect and manage data on land inventory to guide future development opportunities?
• How can the city use data to better identify and acquire blighted properties and areas in need of redevelopment?
• How can the city proactively identify properties in need of rehabilitation or repair?

What You’ll Do

To address these key questions, the fellow will engage with key internal and external stakeholders. These include the city’s Department of Metropolitan Development, Building Commission, the Evansville Land Bank, the Area Plan Commission, and the Office of Evansville Mayor Stephanie Terry. External stakeholders will include the Memorial Community Development Group, ECHO Housing, the Evansville Regional Economic Partnership, and other nonprofit and private developers.

The success of the summer fellowship will be measured by the creation of the following deliverables:

1. For at least one of the target areas (Center City, Jacobsville, and the South Kentucky Redevelopment TIF):
• A database of properties in the target area that require significant repair, rehabilitation, or redevelopment and will have the greatest impact for residents in need
• A process for identifying ownership of cataloged properties, appropriate avenues for purchasing these properties, and procedures for determining the best use for them
• Information that will assist city officials in proactively and strategically collaborating with nonprofit and for-profit organizations to develop new commercial and residential properties

2. A white paper highlighting opportunities for revitalization in the target areas based on the information gathered during the fellowship and best practices for redevelopment from Evansville and other comparable cities
3. A report summarizing approaches and lessons learned from the pilot in one or more target areas, including recommendations for the future expansion of the program and how to best develop and maintain systems for identifying, mapping, and cataloguing undeveloped, vacant, and blighted properties
4. A presentation of program results, opportunities covered in the white paper, and plans to hand over to the DMD for further expansion throughout the city

What You’ll Bring

• Data analysis
• Design thinking
• Mapping (GIS)
• Qualitative interviewing and analysis

Apply here.

Back to Summer Fellowships page.