Neighborhoods

LaJuanna Williams' little girl, Andrea, loved the house near the corner of Elgin Avenue on Cleveland’s east side.

“The house was gorgeous,” Williams said. “It had a princess palace window.” Parts of the home were painted purple, one of Andrea’s favorite colors. “She said, ‘Mommy, I would love to live in that house,’” Williams said.

After an accidental shooting took Andrea’s life in April of 2008, Williams decided to buy the house her daughter loved so much. “To me, it was kind of like having a piece of her,” she said. Then, she lost the house too. Williams became one of the thousands of people across Ohio still grappling with the aftereffects of the foreclosure crisis when she fell prey to a form of lending that can become predatory. “I felt like I deceived her,” Williams said of her daughter. “I let her down once again. I couldn’t save her life, and now I can’t save the house she wanted.” 

Rent-to-own leases and land contracts, which are similar, are advertised as affordable ways to own homes. However, housing experts said those who sign them often end up worse off. “In some ways, it's the exact opposite of a regular mortgage,” said Ben Faller, a professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law and an Ohio housing expert. “You see contracts, in some ways reminiscent of what we saw during the height of the mortgage boom…that are designed to fail.” The deals often come with unmanageable conditions. The buyer secures a low monthly payment that would be put toward the principal, but, like a homeowner, is saddled with the cost of taxes, liens, code violations and repairs. Like a renter, if the buyer misses even single a payment, they can end up in eviction court and lose any money they’ve invested in the home. According to Cuyahoga County data, in the last 10 years, 1,723 land contracts were recorded in the county. To read the full story from ABC News 5 Cleveland, click here. 

Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Tanisha
Wheeler and Stephanie Gilchrist of Inspiring Minds Youngstown sat down with us
to talk about their first month at the Glenwood Business Center.

Tanisha has
been with Inspiring Minds for about two years and Stephanie served on the board
then became Executive Director last year. Inspiring Minds Youngstown is an
after school and summer enrichment program that focuses on professional
development, creative education, and college preparation for at-risk and
underserved youth in the City of Youngstown. Inspiring Minds started in the
Warren area in 2006 and the Youngstown branch was the first to expand about
four years ago. A branch has since been opened in Philadelphia and branches
plan to open in New York and Raleigh, NC in 2019. Stephanie and Tanisha saw
there was a demand for high school programming in the area and decided they
needed their own space after running the programming at area schools. Tanisha
says the Glenwood Business Center has been the perfect space for Inspiring
Minds, allowing students to gather in common areas then break out into separate
spaces to work on creative projects or homework. While we were there, students
were busy recording an Inspiring Minds podcast in the music room. Stephanie says
that the open-ended creative projects are intended to inspire an entrepreneurial
spirit in the students and encourage them to take charge of their own futures. She
says the students really appreciate that a space has been dedicated just for
them. We’d like to thank Tanisha and Stephanie for sitting down with us and
wish them luck as they continue Inspiring Minds Youngstown programming at the
Glenwood Business Center. 

Monday, December 3, 2018

The work of the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation is highlighted in an article titled "How to Fight Vacancy? Do It All" in the November edition of Shelterforce magazine.

The YNDC team wrote the article at the request of Shelterforce, which is is an independent publication of the National Housing Institute that serves (and sometimes challenges) community development practitioners across the United States. The article can be read here.

Thursday, December 6, 2018

On Wednesday, December 5, the FirstEnergy Foundation awarded a $5,000 grant to YNDC for Corridor Improvement Corps. 

The Corridor Improvement Corps is a comprehensive revitalization strategy aimed at improving public health, safety, and quality of life for residents by leveraging AmeriCorps members and community volunteers to complete physical improvements to Youngstown’s neighborhood corridors. The improvements will include 1) cleaning up and painting blighted walls and facades of vacant buildings, 2) cleaning up and clearing overgrowth from vacant lots littered with debris, 3) planting hearty urban trees, 4) installing split rail fencing along vacant lots, 5) replacing broken and unsafe sidewalks, 6) installing covered benches at public spaces and bus stops, and 7) improving corridor lighting and signage around public spaces and corridor businesses. When applied systematically, these improvements will restore a basic sense of order to Youngstown’s corridors and will result in sustainable improvements to the safety and quality of life for Youngstown’s residents. Many thanks to the First Energy Foundation for the support! REVITALIZE.

A group of West Side residents hopeful that a house they consider a nuisance would transfer into possession of the Mahoning County Land Bank saw its hopes dashed after a last-minute redemption kept the property in the hands of its current owners.

It’s a scenario that has played out many times before: The county moves to foreclose on a property – oftentimes vacant properties with absent owners, but not always – and the property owner makes a deal to either pay the back taxes or establish a payment plan.

Though the system is meant to ensure that individuals have options to negotiate with the county and forestall the loss of their homes in the event they owe back taxes, the system is indiscriminate in the home- owners they protect.

The owners of 345 S. Hazelwood Ave., New York-based Canus Investments, use the home as a rental property. The investment group reached an agreement with the county in September to address its $3,258 in delinquent taxes.

The house has sat vacant for more than a year, however, and neighbors want to see something happen with the structure. To read the full story from The Vindicator, click here. 

Youngstown council's community planning and economic development committee met with concerned citizens to consider legislation to address predatory land contracts on Monday.

Council said recently the city has experienced an increase in out of town and out of state property owners buying property.

They also said this is a way for owners to take advantage of residents and blight the neighborhoods. To read the full story from WFMJ, click here.

The first reading of the legislation is slated for the beginning of January.

"This is a serious problem we need to address in our neighborhoods," said Jack Daugherty, a community leader.

Daugherty was among several community members who sat in on the meeting.

"People sometimes end up paying seven to 20 times what the house is actually worth through these land contracts," Daugherty said.

In these contracts, the hopeful homeowners end up paying more because of inflated interest rates. They also are not given protections like you would through a traditional mortgage.

"So, they create these very confusing contracts that are very hard to follow that intentionally prey upon people and exploit them," Daugherty said. To read the full story from WKBN, click here.

The campaign led by city activists to end predatory land contracts took a small step forward Monday night during a meeting of Youngstown’s Housing, Community and Economic Development committee.

City Prosecutor Dana Lantz presented the committee with a rough draft of an upcoming piece of legislation that would give the city the authority to require interior and exterior inspections of a property before it could be sold using a land-installment contract.

Members of the Alliance for Congregational Transformation Influencing our Neighborhoods (ACTION) and various neighborhood organizations attended the meeting and have largely led the local charge against land-contract companies. The groups have been working to see a piece of legislation introduced to city council since October.

After Lantz and Patricia Dougan, a lawyer with Community Legal Aid, revise the current draft, the legislation will go before council for a first reading the first week of January. After that, the legislation will be brought before ACTION members and other activists who will be able to review it and ensure it addresses their concerns, after which it will proceed to second and third readings, with a potential passage sometime in mid-to-late February.

Lantz said the city would have to train inspectors to conduct both interior and exterior inspections, but that noncity inspectors could be used by prospective home vendors so long as they are approved by the city. She emphasized that for such an inspection program to exist, it would have to be financially self-sustaining.

The current legislation only addresses land-installment contracts. Rent-to-own land contracts will be the next piece of legislation the city and activist groups aim to pass.

Under rent-to-own land contracts, prospective owners pay rent to a seller for a predetermined number of years before having the option to purchase the property. To read the full story from The Vindicator, click here. 

Julius Bennett is a lifelong resident of Youngstown who grew up on a family farm on the East Side and has lived in the Idora Neighborhood for over 40 years.

He has served on the boards of the Associated Neighborhood Center, Southside Ministries, and the United Methodist Community Center. He currently serves as a board member of the Mahoning Valley Historical Society and is actively involved at Tabernacle Baptist Church.

Rosetta Carter is a lifelong resident of Youngstown and retired after more than 23 years with Huntington Bank as a loan officer and community redevelopment specialist.

She is currently the Executive Director of A.C.T.I.O.N., a faith-based grassroots community organization which seeks to unite faith groups, schools, unions, tenant councils, and other non-profits to work for social justice. Ms. Carter also serves on the board of MYCAP, Common Wealth, Healthy Community Partnership , Dress to Succeed, National Council of Negro Women’s Association, and the Home for Good Returning Citizens.