Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Pilot Data Evictions topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Student researcher: HEHFB pilot properties tied to disproportionate share of Memphis evictions
Summary
Rhodes College student Ella Jarnigan told the committee she matched PILOT contract parcels to assessor data and found 591 parcels from 107 contracts; she said HHFB/HEHFB pilot properties were responsible for roughly 20% of Memphis evictions despite covering about 0.17% of parcels.
Ella Jarnigan, a senior at Rhodes College working with the Research for Action Lab, presented a data-cleaning and parcel-matching analysis the committee said it commissioned, telling members she converted the PILOT PDF into spreadsheets, corrected parcel-ID formats and manually verified more than 150 parcel records.
"There were 591 parcels, that came out of the 107 contracts," Jarnigan said, and she reported that "HHFB pilot properties were responsible for around 20% of Memphis' evictions overall, even though they only cover 0.17% of the parcels in Memphis." She described mapping concentrations in Southeast Memphis, identifying top individual owners on raw eviction counts and on eviction rates, and said the analysis showed both local and nonlocal owners appearing on PILOT applications.
Jarnigan recommended practical steps to improve oversight: provide the PILOT report as an Excel file, collaborate with the assessor to standardize parcel IDs and build an integrated database to automate data sharing. "I think it would be great to get that priority bumped up," she said. Committee members responded that better data would be essential before making policy recommendations and talked about recruiting assessor staff and additional technical support.
