Neighborhoods

Tuesday, August 28, 2018

YNDC is getting the work done in 2018! Here are some
highlights of our work to date in 2018:

214 new clients were enrolled in HUD-approved housing
counseling

569 volunteers cleared 1,733 yards of debris, scraped 14,631
linear feet of sidewalk, and removed 615 tires at 13 workdays

451 students attended 34 Safe Routes to School events

31 active Community Tool Shed members

80 vacant houses boarded

14 vacant homes were rehabilitated

Shannon Stamp, a United Way volunteer at the Youngstown Community School, is about to start her fourth year of helping with the Success After 6 Initiative.

Volunteers engage with children one-on-one, not just teaching them how to read but also mentoring those who show genuine interest in the kids and their education. The rooms are alive with activity as volunteers guide the children in a personal way that helps develop the emotional and social aspects of learning, not just academics.

Stamp is passionate about the program, she says. She also serves as vice president of Women United, the Youngstown United Way’s leadership program for women.

“I have never done anything more rewarding in my life than the volunteer work I do with the United Way,” says Stamp. “I personally know the destruction illiteracy does to a person and a family.”

Throughout the Mahoning and Shenango valleys, volunteers give their time and money to advance the United Ways’ missions.

The focus of these programs is not only to address needs such as providing food, clothing and shelter for the less fortunate but to also alleviate many of the causes of poverty.

“We as the United Way, with limited dollars, are getting to the root cause,” says Jim Micsky, executive director of the United Way of Mercer County. “The dollars we invest go into prevention programming and early education. The birth to age six timeframe for children is crucial and the community needs to be engaged.”

Success By 6 is just one of the programs to address one of United Way’s top objectives: to effect poverty through early education. To read the full article from The Business Journal, click here.

Activists demanding the city take efforts to protect residents from predatory land contracts took to Youngstown City Hall on Tuesday to demand action.

Members of the Alliance for Congregational Transformation Influencing Our Neighborhoods – including local neighborhood leaders and members of the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. – brought the draft of an ordinance before Youngstown City Council’s Committee on Community Planning and Economic Development.

Elder Rose Carter, ACTION’s executive director, led a group of more than 30 members and concerned residents to pressure the city to pass legislation to force property owners to obtain a clearance from the city before they rent or lease a property using a land contract.

The legislation would require owners to alert the city to the contract, have the property inspected and earn a certificate of compliance through the department of Property Code Enforcement and Demolition before being cleared for rental.

“We’re not saying land contracts are bad, but we need to make sure that they’re fair,” Carter said.

Under land contracts, prospective owners pay rent to a seller for a predetermined number of years before having the option to purchase the property.

However, the contracts often push the burden of maintaining, repairing and dealing with financial issues attached to the property onto the renters, offering them no protections that would otherwise be available to traditional renters or mortgage-holders. This leaves renters open to any number of pitfalls, including pouring thousands of dollars into repairs or agreeing to rent a property that is, unbeknownst to them, in foreclosure. To read the full story from The Vindicator, click here. 

Wednesday, August 29, 2018

On Tuesday, August 28, members of ACTION and neighborhood leaders attended the Youngstown City Council’s Committee on Community Planning and Economic Development meeting at City Hall to press for a citywide adoption of an ordinance addressing predatory land contracts.

Elder Rose Carter and Elder Craig Gilchrist spoke at the meeting to explain the dangers of predatory lending and illustrate how large, out-of-state companies like Vision Property Management and Harbor Portfolio prey on low-income and communities of color in Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley. A draft of the ordinance was presented to the committee, but Atty. Nicole Alexander, Youngstown Senior Assistant Law Director, said the legislation would need to undergo revision in order to better protect citizens and the City from legal recourse before it can be forwarded to City Council. ACTION members and the Committee on Community Planning and Economic Development settled on aiming to have a final draft of the legislation ready by October at the latest. If you believe you are a victim of predatory lending, contact Community Legal Aid at 330.362.8350. 

The Raymond John Wean Foundation is celebrating 10 years of funding community projects in the Mahoning Valley.

The foundation’s Neighborhood SUCCESS Grants program, developed in 2008 as a way to realize community-led quality-of-life developments in the region, has funded close to 500 projects in those 10 years, to the tune of about $1.6 million.

SUCCESS grant amounts range from $500 to $5,000 for foundation council-approved projects. Grant funding in 2017 totaled almost $99,000, which project leaders used to leverage about $685,000 in funding — all invested “right here in the valley,” said foundation President Jennifer Roller.

“Before you know it, what was a $5,000 project, with all of the leverage, turns out to be a $25,000 project – not to mention the time people are contributing to do the work,” she said.

The foundation maintains a more than $80 million endowment and distributes more than $2 million in support each year, including the SUCCESS grants. Since the foundation formed in 1949, it has distributed more than $117 million, Roller said.

“We started the program as a tool to engage civic activists in the valley and to jump start an effort focused on community engagement,” said Joel Ratner, the former Wean Foundation president during the SUCCESS grant program’s founding.

Carole Conatser, who runs the Hope for Newport Community Garden along Clearmount Drive in Youngstown, said her church garden has used the SUCCESS grant each of the last four years to buy supplies such as topsoil and fertilizer, deer fences, plants and sometimes equipment.

The grant’s also gone toward the garden to include a butterfly garden, a healing garden for trauma survivors which opened this summer and an orchard. The garden’s six raised beds grow free produce handed out each Saturday to residents of Newport — an area Conatser called a “food desert,” and far from a large grocer.

“Residents come with their bags — and the children as well — and we chat with them; we get to know them,” she said. “They go home with a large bag of fresh greens, tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, okra and herbs from the garden.

“We could not do it without the Wean Foundation. They have been invaluable to us,” Conatser said. To read the full article from The Vindicator, click here.

Activists demanding the city take efforts to protect residents from predatory land contracts took to Youngstown City Hall Tuesday to demand action.

Members of the Alliance for Congregational Transformation Influencing Our Neighborhoods — including local neighborhood leaders and members of the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. — brought the draft of an ordinance before City Council’s Committee on Community Planning and Economic Development.

Elder Rose Carter, ACTION’s executive director, led a group of more than 30 members and concerned residents to pressure the city to pass legislation to force property owners to obtain a clearance from the city before they rent or lease a property using a land contract.

The legislation would require owners to alert the city to the contract, have the property inspected and earn a certificate of compliance through the department of Property Code Enforcement and Demolition before being cleared for rental.

“We’re not saying land contracts are bad, but we need to make sure that they’re fair,” Carter said. To read the full story from The Vindicator, click here.

While land contracts can be an alternative route to homeownership for people without access to traditional mortgages, the terms often lead to more community destabilization in areas already weakened by the foreclosure crisis, according to researchers, attorneys, fair housing activists and other officials.

Trumbull County had the most land contracts recorded with county recorders’ offices across the state between January 2008 and January 2018, according to a report composed by Victoria Jackson with Ohio Policy Matters. She said many land contracts are never recorded despite a state law requiring them to be.

If the terms are appropriate, the contracts can be helpful to people seeking to buy a home who do not have the credit history required for traditional bank loans, or those seeking homes in areas banks deem too risky to lend in. The contracts also can be helpful to homeowners trying to sell a home in a market flooded with undervalued houses, said Matt Martin, executive director of Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership, which runs the Trumbull County Land Bank.

But when large investment groups, or even local real estate investors and landlords, get their hands on a large amount of properties in places like Warren and Youngstown, land contracts and lease-to-own contracts are often riddled with clauses that offer the illusion of homeownership without the benefits and protections but rife with obligation, said Rachel Nader, managing attorney of Community Legal Aid.

“In the Mahoning Valley area, people in the city of Youngstown and the city of Warren have long been preyed upon by entities that promise the dream of home ownership because of our vulnerable populations. We see it in the most devastated neighborhoods,” Nader said.

The seller can force the buyer out of the home through a forfeiture, holding onto all money and value put into the home. The protections afforded to someone being put through a foreclosure are not available to those in land contracts until they have been in the contract for five years, or have paid 20 percent of the price, according to the report. To read the full story from the Tribune Chronicle, click here.

LOCAL TOPICS ON TV

“Community Connection” (Sunday at 7:30 a.m. on WYTV-TV): Host Dee Crawford explores the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. and its programs to revitalize the city and create a path to home ownership for many residents.

ENTERTAINMENT NEWS

New coaster to hit 78 mph in 2 seconds

GURNEE, Ill.

A Chicago-area theme park says it will open a new roller coaster that will accelerate from 0 to 78 miles per hour in less than two seconds.

Six Flags Great America announced the new attraction, called Maxx Force, on Thursday. It’s scheduled to open next summer at the park in Gurnee, Ill., and park officials say it will be the fastest launch coaster in North America.

Six Flags Great America President Hank Salemi says the coaster will be “in a class all by itself.”

He says Maxx Force also will feature the highest double inversion and fastest inversion of any roller coaster in the world. Its custom coaster trains will be modeled after Formula One Racing cars. To read the full story from The Vindicator, click here.

The United Way of Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley’s 21st annual Day of Caring is set to welcome a record 1,000 volunteers from 90 local businesses and organizations.

“A thousand people is an amazing testament to the generous spirit of the Mahoning Valley,” said Bob Hannon, president of the United Way of Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley. “Every year this event grows, and we are so thankful to the businesses and organizations that let their employees off work for the day to participate. Not only do many of these people donate money to our annual campaign, they are not afraid to roll up their sleeves and get to work.”

The Day of Caring takes place Friday and will also kick off the United Way of Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley’s 2018 annual campaign. United Way will announce its campaign goal at a breakfast, which starts at 8 a.m. at the Covelli Centre. Then at 9:15 the volunteers will head off to their projects. To read the full story from The Business Journal, click here. 

The City Club of Mahoning Valley will host a community panel discussion with three national experts with extensive knowledge of Youngstown Sept. 11 at 5:30 p.m.

The panel at The Youngstown Playhouse will build on the ideas and strategies highlighted in urban development expert Alan Mallach’s new book “The Divided City, Poverty and Prosperity in Urban America.”

Discussion will focus on what Youngstown must do to strengthen revitalization efforts to improve the quality of life for all residents. Lessons from Cleveland and Pittsburgh will be integrated into the discussion. To read the full article from The Business Journal, click here.