1,000 Houses in 1,000 Days

2013–2019

On February 27, 2013 the city's Vacant and Abandoned Properties Task Force — co-chaired by James Kelly of the Notre Dame Law School — released its report, and Mayor Buttigieg set the goal that named the program: one thousand vacant and abandoned houses addressed in one thousand days, by repair or by demolition, backed by stepped-up code enforcement and fines against owners who let houses rot. South Bend had roughly two thousand vacant and abandoned properties, and the program was the administration's signature answer. It met its number. By day one thousand, in November 2015, the city had acted on 1,122 properties; by the federal case study's accounting, about 40 percent were repaired and about 60 percent demolished.

The dispute was over who bore the cost. It surfaced early — Councilman Henry Davis Jr. was criticizing the program's effect on Black neighborhoods by 2015 — and it reached the national press on April 9, 2019, when BuzzFeed News published a long examination of the demolitions under the headline "What Happened When Pete Buttigieg Tore Down Houses In Black And Latino South Bend." Residents described repair orders carrying two-month deadlines, with fines and fees stacking against owners who could not comply. Councilwoman Regina Williams-Preston, who had been elected from the city's near northwest side, was among those who received such orders: houses she owned with her husband were among the program's casualties, a fact she spoke about publicly as both an official and an affected owner.

The administration's answer was also on the record. Officials, including James Mueller, the mayor's chief of staff and later his successor, maintained that the city had always tried to save houses where saving was possible, and pointed to the same figures the federal study reported — some two-fifths of the thousand-plus properties repaired rather than razed, in a city where abandoned houses had drawn crime and dragged down the blocks around them. No court ruled on the program and no official inquiry was convened; there is no finding, in either direction, to print. Later reporting added a physical coda: years after the demolitions, hundreds of vacant city-owned lots remained, concentrated in the same southwest and northwest corridors, some of them unmaintained and used for dumping. The program stands in the record as a documented success by its own measure and a documented grievance by its neighbors' — both accounts sourced, neither adjudicated.

Sources:

1. City of South Bend, Vacant & Abandoned Properties Task Force report, February 27, 2013
2. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, PD&R Edge case study of the 1,000 Houses in 1,000 Days initiative (1,122 properties; ~40/60 repair-demolition split)
3. Henry J. Gomez, "What Happened When Pete Buttigieg Tore Down Houses In Black And Latino South Bend," BuzzFeed News, April 9, 2019
4. South Bend Tribune, coverage of the program, the 2015 criticism, and the vacant-lot aftermath