Program to tackle flooded homes ‘Block by Block’

Trucking-firm owner John Smith and his wife, Dyan, are investing $1 million of their own money in a novel idea to put eight residential blocks hit by last year's flood largely back on their feet by Christmas.

Block by Block kicks off Tuesday afternoon with an event in the first block targeted by the neighborhood rebuilding effort, the 1300 block of Eighth Street NW.

The Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation, which has been a repository for the Flood 2008 Fund, also will steer $700,000 from the community fund to the effort. The United Methodist Church gave $200,000, and at least another $100,000 in materials have been donated.

John Smith, president/CEO of CRST International, previously has opened up the Cedar Rapids trucking firm's corporate checkbook to the local small-business recovery effort and to help create the flood-recovery entity, the Economic Planning and Redevelopment Corp., of which Smith is chairman.

Neither investment, he and his wife said, could shake their sense that more needed to be done to help the city's flood-damaged neighborhoods.

“There is work being done in the neighborhoods; I don't want to say nothing is being done,” John Smith said, “but I don't believe enough work is being done quickly enough.”

He said the idea of Block by Block emerged over a few weeks in conversations with Jim Ernst, president/CEO of the Four Oaks family services agency and the Affordable Housing Network, and with Dan Baldwin, president/CEO of the Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation.

The Rev. Clint Twedt-Ball of the neighborhood ministry Matthew 25 played a key role in developing the idea, said Liz Mathis, spokeswoman for Four Oaks.

Dyan Smith said she and her husband had come to wonder about residential blocks in which some owners are fixing up their homes and getting back into them, while others aren't.

“(People who are working to move back) are hesitant, because two doors down there may be a house that is still in great disrepair and nobody is living there and it's black during the night,” she said, “and that does not do anything for their property values or for their safety or security.”

Block by Block is being operated by Matthew 25, with fiscal and management oversight by the Affordable Housing Network. The idea is to identify particular blocks as candidates for the program and then to assess, property by property, if the owners are interested in participating. The program then will invest dollars and volunteer labor in selected blocks to get work on each property completed quickly.

Each property will be treated individually, which means some homes may get more help than others. The thought is that all homes in the block will benefit by having the entire block fixed up and reoccupied.

That's how John and Cindy Salat, 1323 Eighth St. NW, see it. Their house, in the first block targeted by Block to Block, is being renovated for sale.

John Salat said what is best for their house is that there is a fix for every house on the block.

“You want a thriving community,” John Salat said. “I think that's the spirit of this program.”

The Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation's Baldwin said the questions that John and Dyan Smith brought to the fore about the pace of flood recovery in neighborhoods had “flummoxed” him, Ernst and others. Programs had been set up, but not everyone was getting to them, Baldwin said.

“We decided we've got to go to the neighborhoods,” he said, “and I think that's really what sparked John and Dyan.”

John Smith said a good thing about Block by Block is that it provides owners with options, including the option not to participate.

“But the majority of the people in that block will have decided to come back and be part of the community,” Dyan Smith said. “They will have a home to live in. It will be safe. It will be secure, up to code. They'll be in their home, and that's what we're hoping for.”