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property comes back on the list later.”
Back in 2008, Floyd County established their
own land bank under the 1990 Land Bank Act in the
state of Georgia. At the time of the establishment,
Fox said land banks were more popular up North,
but the city and county were looking at “new and
innovative” tools for community development.
Originally, there wasn’t a funding source and the
government entity was very restricted in what it could
do. Eventually, the land bank became inactive after
a few years.
“It wasn’t a lack of interest or effort, we just really
didn’t know what to do,” Fox said.
In 2012, the state of Georgia passed the Land
Bank Act, an updated version of the 1990 act.
This updated act allowed new and existing land
banks more power and gave them new funding
mechanisms.
The Rome-Floyd Land Bank Authority was
reestablished in 2014 with a new intergovernmental
agreement. After pushing past a few more obstacles,
the agreement was put into effect on Feb. 28, 2017.
After putting together the board and selling their
first parcel in September 2017, they’ve been “rocking
and rolling ever since.” Fox said.
The Land Bank Authority is staffed by the Rome
Community Development Department and they get
the majority of their parcels from the Floyd County
Tax Assessor’s Office.
Since 2017, the Land Bank Authority has
managed to take its initial balance of $15,000 and
increase it over 10 times.
Their current balance equals a little over
$180,000.
“It is all from the sale of properties and taxes we
have collected,” Fox said.
The Land Bank primarily uses their funding for
operations such as redevelopment, which includes
acquisition, rehabilitation and resale of blighted or
58 OUTLOOK | APRIL 2020
abandoned properties. They also use the funds for
demolition and removal of blighted properties.
By the end of 2019, the government entity had
acquired 103 parcels, mostly from the county.
Of those parcels, 99 of them were sold - 26
structures and 73 vacant lots.
“As of the end of December, we have returned
$1.4 million in assessed value of properties back on
the tax roll since September of 2017,” Fox said.
Many of the structure parcels get rehabilitated,
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