Neighborhoods


Strategic Neighborhood Transformation

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The Mahoning County Land Reutilization Corp., commonly known as the Mahoning County Land Bank, is shifting its efforts from demolition work to revitalization projects through residential rehabilitation, greening strategies and more.

It has worked with local governments, community partners and neighbors to complete hundreds of demolitions between 2012 and 2019, officials say. This has occurred through the Moving Ohio Forward demolition grant program funded by the Ohio Attorney General’s Office and the Neighborhood Initiative Program demolition grant funded by the Ohio Housing Financing Agency. 

NIP has supported 1,100 demolitions in Mahoning County and tens of thousands across the state in recent years, but is expected to end this year.

In Campbell alone, the Land Bank leveraged $1.2 million over three years to complete targeted improvements. These comprised acquiring more than 100 properties, completing 97 demolitions, establishing Bright Avenue Park and preserving, renovating and selling six houses previously targeted for demolition, according to Debora Flora, executive director of the land bank.

“The Neighborhood Initiative Program was an opportunity to rejuvenate residential areas after property abandonment had inflicted great damage,” says Flora. “We removed vacant, blighted houses from streets and inserted green spaces as new neighborhood assets. We were happy to work with city leaders and the community to build a strong, healthier community that people are proud to work and live in.”

The land bank expects to renovate more houses in the years ahead as funding for housing demolitions declines, she notes.

The land bank recently completed an exhaustive renovation of a split-level Austintown house once deemed a “nuisance” by the township. 

“We’re glad the township thought of us as a helpful resource in restoring this home,” Flora says. “Years ago, we did a small handful of these rehabilitation projects. But in more recent years, we’ve been focused on demolitions and greening projects. This renovation marked our return to this kind of work.”

The land bank hopes to continue to work with townships by taking vacant houses off their hands and restoring them, then putting them back on the market at a fair price.

“With our market rehab program, we’re able to see the transformation firsthand from start to finish,” says Roger Smith, land bank director of planning, acquisition and disposition. “Typically, we acquire properties and then our qualified owner-occupants or investors rehab them. With this program, we’re the ones doing the renovation and can see it through each step of the way.”

The land bank also relies on its partnerships to bring life back to houses and neighborhoods, including its recent projects with the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. The land bank acquired and demolished structures on several properties, which cleared the space for YNDC to build three new houses. The land bank also acquired and transferred the house that would mark YNDC’s 100th house renovation, Flora notes.

To see the full story from The Business Journal, click here.

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Thursday, February 13, 2020

Kyle and Kimberly were both born and raised in Youngstown and wanted to stay local. They had been house hunting for a very long time before they came across the listing for YNDC's new construction at 4329 Helena Avenue.

They instantly fell in love with the home - the space that their home provides, that it was fully move-in ready, and the Handel's Neighborhood where it is located. Every aspect of this home was exactly what they were looking for. They are both first time home buyers and this experience has changed their lives a lot. The increased responsibility of owning a home and caring for a larger space has been an exciting new challenge for the couple. Through housing counseling, the homeowners were set up for success and they highly recommend YNDC's HUD-Approved Housing Counseling program for anyone in the homebuying process, especially for those who are first time home buyers. Congratulations, Kyle and Kimberly! Thank you both for your investment in Youngstown’s neighborhoods and best wishes in your new home!

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Huntington Bank rolled out new products and services in 2019 and also earned honors for customer satisfaction.

For the second year in a row, Huntington Bank was the nation’s largest originator by volume of Small Business Administration 7(a) loans, based on figures at the close of SBA fiscal 2019. It was the 11th consecutive year the bank led in the category.

Huntington claimed the top spots in the J.D. Power 2019 U.S. Banking App Satisfaction Study and the U.S. Online Banking Satisfaction Study. Both awards demonstrate the bank’s commitment to listening to customers, says William C. Shivers, regional president of Huntington Bank in the Mahoning Valley and Canton regions.

In May, Huntington rolled out a new business banking product suite with four aspects: fraud protection, unlimited transactions, simplicity and active insights. As a result, the deposit product suite contains two new checking accounts that include unlimited transactions.

Huntington also last year launched Zelle on its mobile and online banking platforms. Zelle enables person-to-person payment capabilities for its consumer banking customers.

Early in 2019, the bank was recognized by Greenwich Associates for excellence in the delivery of small business banking, middle-market banking and cash management services that help businesses.

Huntington middle-market banking received five national Greenwich Excellence Awards.

Financial literacy remained a focus for Huntington through financial support and classroom volunteerism. Huntington colleagues present financial literacy education using Junior Achievement curriculum as well as Huntington’s Reality Day programming, Shivers notes.

For the second consecutive year, Huntington adopted McGuffey Elementary School through the United Way of Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley’s Success After 6 Program. Huntington also works closely with the Boys & Girls Club of Youngstown to deliver financial literacy sessions to participating students.

The year 2019 marked the ninth-consecutive year Huntington gave away nearly 1,000 backpacks to help children get ready for the school year.

Neighborhood and economic development are also focal points for Huntington. The bank is involved with Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. and Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership, as well as Youngstown Business Incubator and area chambers of commerce.

To see the full story from The Business Journal, click here.

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Help is needed to improve not only the city’s housing stock, but to protect those who want to buy or rent from predatory lenders and absentee landlords, Youngstown area housing officials said.

The topics were discussed Monday with U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Cleveland Democrat, who hosted a housing roundtable discussion Monday at the main branch of the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County.

“You have a federal government that’s interested more in helping investors and helping Wall Street and taking away consumer protections,” he said. “That’s a serious, serious problem.”

Michael Durkin, the city’s code enforcement and blight remediation superintendent who participated in the discussion, said: “Some landlords are preying on people.”

Because some properties in the city are so cheap, landlords from not only out of the area, but out of the country are buying them up and renting them, Durkin said. He said an Australian company purchased about 10 houses on Ford Avenue for a total cost of about $60,000 in less than a year.

Brown is the ranking Democrat on the Senate’s Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. If Democrats gain control of the Senate, he’ll become chairman.

Brown said he’d “move quickly and aggressively on housing. If you don’t have good housing everything is upside down. When 25 percent of Americans pay more than half of their income in rent” it’s a problem.

Ian Beniston, Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. executive director and a panelist, said: “We have an old housing stock in the city.”

To see the full story from The Vindicator, click here.

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Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown got a clearer picture of some of the Valley’s housing problems on Monday at a meeting with local groups and city leaders.

The group talked about the issues people looking for good, low-income housing face and the need to get rid of blighted and abandoned housing. They also discussed landlords who prey on tenants.

To see the full story from WKBN, click here.

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U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Cleveland, D-Ohio, invited Durkin and other local housing experts and advocates to a roundtable discussion on the obstacles to affordable housing Monday at the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County along Wick Avenue.

“We have an affordable housing crisis in Ohio and all over the country,” Brown said in a release. “We need a housing system that works for everyone, whether they’re renting or want to buy a home, no matter who they are, no matter what kind of work they do, or where they live.

“That’s why I’m asking Ohioans to share their stories with me as we work to turn those conversations into policy ideas that help Ohio workers and Ohio families.”

Many of the predatory landowners known to city and county officials don’t operate in the state — or even in the country.

Durkin has seen landowners from Portugal, Belize, Singapore and elsewhere. He said one Australian company bought 10 homes along Ford Avenue within a six-month span — all for about $60,000.

Ian Beniston, executive director of the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation, said the companies’ common practice is to scoop up low-value properties — for maybe a few thousand dollars — then leave repairs up to the residents who’ve signed land contracts, often for many times that amount.

To see the full story from Mahoning Matters, click here.

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Senator Sherrod Brown was in Youngstown Monday talking to people who have struggled to find affordable housing and housing experts. One of the big obstacles discussed—the way people are renting or getting into land contracts for houses that are substandard.

"Houses that need a lot of work, houses that people want to have a sense of security but that security gets taken away from them because of the conditions of the agreements by which they're there. They're predatory contracts and a number of people are trying to do something about that but it will just lead to another large cycle of demolition here in Youngstown unless we change the system," described Debora Flora, executive director of the Mahoning County Land Bank. 

Flora said that there needs to be legislation and local boots on the ground to make some movement here.

To see the full story from WFMJ, click here.

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When the housing bubble burst, it left a trail of dilapidated homes in Ohio’s cities and rural communities. A decade later, that gave birth to a new problem for those communities: lease-to-own deals that promised a piece of the American dream but often turned out to be nightmares.

Tara Brown remembers moving day, June 12, 2015.

“I was so, so excited. I was like, ‘Zack, yes, we bought a place! We’re going to settle. We’ll make some roots.’”

It was nothing fancy, a kind-of hybrid red and white bungalow on the south side of Youngstown. But it was hers — she thought. No more landlords who disappeared with the rent money or didn’t respond when the furnace cut out. No more bathtubs falling through the ceiling.

Except the next day, when she got home from work, she remembers her boyfriend Zack telling her, “‘I have bad news.’ I said, ‘What do you mean you have bad news?’ He said, ‘There’s no water lines in the house, there’s no gas so we have no heat.’ He’s like, ‘half the electricity in the house doesn’t work.’”

Undaunted, they filled 5- gallon jugs with water from her sister’s house and heated it in a coffee pot. They ripped the bathroom down to the studs, and every two weeks, when their paychecks arrived, they bought another piece of what it would take to make the house a home.

A waitress, Brown chuckles when she recalls spending Christmas tips on a luxury — a $200 toilet with a heated seat.

The downpayment, monthly payments and cost and sweat equity of repairs kept adding up. They held on tighter.  “I was like, you know what, whatever this house throws at us we can do this.”

Then the raw sewage bubbled up through the basement floor.

That’s when Brown dug deeper into the details of the deal they’d signed with Vision Property Management and realized — as far as the paperwork was concerned — they were renters who had taken on all the responsibilities of homeowners. They’d signed up for the house as-is. When they couldn’t make monthly payments and fix the pipes, Brown, her son and boyfriend were evicted.

The end of an ordeal
More than four years after it all began — just before last Christmas — they got a check for $25,000, their part of Vision’s settlement with about a dozen Mahoning Valley families with similar stories of high-pressure sales of substandard houses shrouded in confusing paperwork.

They were represented by Community Legal Aid, whose director, Steve McGarrity maintains the Vision Property deals skirted laws that cover renters and those covering home buyers. The deals included no appraisals and no home inspections and no landlord-tenant protections.

“Sometimes people come up with really creative ways to take money from poor people, and this was a really creative way to do it,” McGarrity said.

Accusations and lawsuits
Vision and another large company called Harbour Portfolio have faced similar accusations and lawsuits from Wisconsin to New York. Cincinnati and Toledo have both also taken action against them.

Coming out of the Great Recession, the companies had bought thousands of distressed properties around the country in bulk, and many of them were concentrated in the Midwest.

Ian Beniston of the nonprofit Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation said the methods they used to flip the properties spread throughout Youngstown, “which also has an adverse impact on our neighborhood because this blighted house that Harbour cycled three people through is sitting there rotting, and I have to live two houses from it.”

Beniston’s group and another called ACTION tried public shaming two years ago, when they took a bus to South Carolina to protest at Vision’s headquarters. But they also were working government channels. A year ago, they convinced Youngstown City Council to impose new restrictions on land-contracts, requiring sellers to bring houses up to code and get appraisals.

To see the full story from WKSU, click here.

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Friday, January 3, 2020 

YNDC and the City of Youngstown are analyzing housing conditions to develop a housing strategy to improve housing quality for all residents.

An important part of the study is input from Youngstown residents. We are requesting your help by completing a brief housing survey, using the link below. It only takes a few minutes. Thank you for your input!  

Click here.

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Monday, March 2, 2020 

Farmers National Bank has awarded YNDC with a $5,000 grant that will benefit the HUD-approved Housing Counseling Program.

The Housing Counseling Program assists clients with identifying and resolving the barriers to homeownership in one-on-one counseling sessions. Thank you to Farmers National Bank for their ongoing support!