Neighborhoods

Youngstown, Ohio is an upper-midwest city that has come to symbolize the nation’s distress of deindustrialization with high unemployment and crime rates.

But after decades of decline, the city has plans to rebuild, remove blight and attract employers. On issues of poverty and opportunity in America, this is part of an ongoing series of reports called “Chasing the Dream.”

KARLA MURTHY: This house on the south side of Youngstown has been vacant for eight years. The city condemned it after a fire inside. Now it’s being torn down.

Robert Morris lives next door. He says he’s glad to see these abandoned homes in his neighborhood finally get demolished.

ROBERT MORRIS: This neighborhood right here, this used to be high class over here. I mean this whole south corridor was all, it was nice. It was really nice.

KARLA MURTHY: These demolitions are part of a citywide plan to eliminate blight and rebuild. Since the 1950s, Youngstown’s population has declined by 60 percent, from about 168-thousand to 65-thousand and is still shrinking. Thousands of empty homes have been left behind, crippling the housing market, and eroding the social fabric of this once mighty industrial base.

When the steel mills closed in the 1970s, Youngstown lost 40-thousand good paying jobs. Today, almost 40 percent of residents live below the federal poverty line — earning less than 24-thousand a 300 dollars a year for a family of four.

HUNTER MORRISON: What’s a city to do as a city? Pick itself up, dust itself off and start all over again, move forward.

KARLA MURTHY: Hunter Morrison is an urban planner who has worked on rebuilding Youngstown since 2002. He says the plan started with a simple premise: accept that the city was smaller.

HUNTER MORRISON: In America, the entire business of planning and development is based on the phenomena of growth. But what happens when communities one after another see themselves shrinking?

KARLA MURTHY: Over the last 14 years, this new smaller mindset has been the guiding vision for the city, which took stock of its assets, like Youngstown State University, with 14,000 students. The city and the university developed blighted land to connect the campus to downtown – which now has new housing and more places to go out.

HUNTER MORRISON: Today, if you talk to a student, they go down to the restaurants. Some of them live downtown who never would have lived there before.

KARLA MURTHY: But beyond downtown, the city didn’t have the resources to fix its broken neighborhoods. Fewer residents means less tax revenue. So in 2009, the city created a new nonprofit, the Youngstown neighborhood development corporation, or Y.N.D.C., in partnership with the Raymond John Wean Foundation.

IAN BENISTON: You could walk to my house if you want to keep going…”

KARLA MURTHY: Ian Beniston is the executive director. He grew up in Youngstown. His father worked at a steel mill until it closed in 1980.

IAN BENISTON: We don’t go around here talking about utopian visions. We’re dealing with the real basics here. We’ve just got to get neighborhoods cleaned up.

KARLA MURTHY: The Y.N.D.C. has an annual budget of 3 million dollars. The group surveyed every neighborhood in the city to figure out where it could make the biggest difference and create more stability.

IAN BENISTON: Our focus, as an organization, is on those neighborhoods in the middle. So, neighborhoods that have many signs of distress, but they’re not to a point where we have 70 or 80 percent vacancy. So that even in the future, we do at least have these pockets, if nothing else, of healthy neighborhoods.

KARLA MURTHY: One of the first neighborhoods the Y.N.D.C. targeted is called “Idora,” where a quarter of the houses were vacant….Like this one currently being renovated by the Y.N.D.C. Tiffany Sokol has been overseeing this project.

TIFFANY SOKOL: We’ve been able to acquire a lot of properties at zero cost either through bank donations or private personal donations…

KARLA MURTHY: Many homes the Y.N.D.C. acquires are foreclosed properties and are renovated with the help of “Americorps” volunteers.

TIFFANY SOKOL: There’s an abundance of vacant homes but unfortunately the quality is very low. So part of what we’re doing here is trying to raise the standard and raise the quality of homes available.

KARLA MURTHY: A couple blocks away is a house the Y.N.D.C. just finished.

TIFFANY SOKOL: This one was built in the 70s, so it’s really out of character for the neighborhood.

VO: It’s listed for sale for 40 thousand dollars…Above Youngstown’s median home price of 31-thousand, but affordable in this market.

KARLA MURTHY: Have you had any problems getting people to buy the homes that you’ve renovated?

TIFFANY SOKOL: No, most of our homes generally we end up pre-selling before we are even done with the rehabilitation.

KARLA MURTHY: Y.N.D.C. helps potential buyers who have low-to-moderate incomes through housing counseling and mortgage financing.

In the past six years in Idora, 137 abandoned homes have been demolished, 35 homes have been renovated and sold and 88 occupied homes have been repaired.

IAN BENISTON: This was a house we fixed too…

KARLA MURTHY: Today, the occupancy rate of this stripped down, rebuilt neighborhood is 93 percent.

IAN BENISTON: Wait till you see it. It’s pretty awesome…

KARLA MURTHY: Beniston showed me one more feature he’s using as a selling point for Idora: this natural waterfall right in the middle of city.

IAN BENISTON: We had nine vacant homes right by this, yeah, but not anymore.

KARLA MURTHY: Brownlee Woods is another neighborhood where the Y.N.D.C. works. Nancy Martin and her husband Russell have lived here since 1982, and over the years watched people leave as their neighborhood declined.

NANCY MARTIN: We can do one of two things — you can either sit here on the porch and complain, or you get up and do something.

These are the benches we just put in…

KARLA MURTHY: She’s president of her neighborhood association and meets regularly with the Y.N.D.C., which also helps residents develop their own neighborhood action plans…

NANCY MARTIN: They bring a list of all the houses that we’re working on, and we go through each one.

KARLA MURTHY: One house that was falling apart was owned by an out of town businessman. Ian Beniston stepped in.

NANCY MARTIN: And he told him, “Are you going to do anything with this property? Cuz if you’re not, we’re taking it…

KARLA MURTHY: The community is taking over that house, and the Y.N.D.C. brought more than a dozen other houses up to code in Brownlee Woods.

IAN BENISTON: We are making progress. I mean, we know that in terms of owner occupancy, vacancy data. However there are still large swaths of the city, the most distressed swaths, where people are still leaving.

KARLA MURTHY: In those areas of Youngstown with heavy vacancy, the focus is on simply eradicating blight with board-ups, demolitions, and cutting the grass.

Robert Morris is happy to see his neighborhood getting cleaned up, but he’s skeptical things will really improve.

KARLA MURTHY: Do you think this area will ever become what it once was?

ROBERT MORRIS: No. No, I doubt it. No, it’s over. No jobs. Nobody got jobs. Everybody’s out there trying to hustle to make their buck. You know, that’s—it is what it is.

DAWN GRIFFIN: I’m going to give myself maybe another year or two here…

KARLA MURTHY: Dawn Griffin says she’s had a hard time finding a job in Youngstown, and thinks about leaving. Unemployment in Youngstown is eight-and-half percent, three-and-half percent above than the national average. Griffin, a single mother of three, remembers a better time.

DAWN GRIFFIN: I thought we were rich, you know? [laughs] And we were pretty well off, you know? But what is here?

KARLA MURTHY: She also feels like the city isn’t doing enough, especially in low-income neighborhoods like hers, on the east side of Youngstown.

DAWN GRIFFIN:One of my questions was, ‘okay, you’re removing the blight, okay, but what’s going to be there? And it’s nothing but a slab on concrete there. No one wants to invest in that. You can’t do it a little bit, you’ve got to go all the way.

KARLA MURTHY: I asked Beniston about their critique.

KARLA MURTHY: Boarding up homes, grass cutting. How’s it really going to make a big difference?

IAN BENISTON: That will improve the quality of life for the people that are living there now, but by no means am I trying to say that in the most distressed of places just cutting grass and boarding up the houses is sufficient. I’m saying it’s the reality of a lack of resources. I think one of the things we need more of here without a doubt is just jobs. That’s the reality of it, that’s why people leave. So until we can get to a point where we’re attracting, developing, creating, even here locally, more jobs. We’re going to be struggling to get to where we need to be.

KARLA MURTHY: Part of Youngstown’s plan to create more jobs is to change its image as a city dominated by steel. Sharon Woodberry, Youngstown’s director of economic development and community planning, is trying to lure technology entrepreneurs.

SHARON WOODBERRY: We’re still primarily manufacturing-focused but there are other industries that are emerging.

KARLA MURTHY: She points to “America Makes,” a national institute for 3D printing and also the Youngstown business incubator which has created almost 400 jobs at tech start-ups in Youngstown since 2011.

KARLA MURTHY: But unemployment is still high here, right?

SHARON WOODBERRY: It is. It was a decline over decades. It’s a rebuilding that’s going to take some significant time.

HUNTER MORRISON: There are a lot of obstacles in older industrial communities.

KARLA MURTHY: Urban planner Hunter Morrison says progress may seem slow, but not when you understand what’s happened across this region.

HUNTER MORRISON: These communities are very much like New Orleans. New Orleans lost half its population over a weekend. Flint, Cleveland, Youngstown, Detroit lost it over a generation. It’s a major trauma to a community. It takes a long time to get over it.

KARLA MURTHY: How do you stay hopeful, is it a false sense of hope?

IAN BENISTON: For me it’s not a false of hope, because I have a pretty good memory and I know, for example, what this neighborhood looked like. I’ve also seen streets change, where, you know, dozens of houses have been removed, others have come back to life. I feel good about the progress that we’ve made. Am I satisfied with it? Certainly not.

To see the whole story from PBS Newshour, click here.

Monday, April 18, 2016

On Saturday, April 16 a small group of volunteers composed of members of the Tabernacle Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Idora Neighborhood Association, and YNDC removed trash, brush, debris, and lots of leaves from a vacant lot on Volney Road.

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Our Second Annual Global Youth Service Day focused on the Cottage Grove Neighborhood in Youngstown’s South Side near Horizon Science Academy.

In an incredible show of support, 95 volunteers from all around Ohio came to stand up and fight blight. Volunteer children aged 6 to 15, from Horizon Science Academy, Youth Congress, Bondage Busters, and Valley Christian School swept through a total of 25 blocks cleaning all the yards of trash and debris while students from YSU's Greek Life and members of Victory Christian Center boarded a total of 8 houses and removed 462 tires. The event was planned and coordinated by AmeriCorps VISTAs Anika Jacobs, and Sarah Conkle, and YNDC’s Neighborhood Planner Thomas Hetrick who lead teams alongside Jack Daugherty, Frank Elling, Joseph Napier, Bradley McHugh and Cody Signor.

Special thanks to Southgate Pizza on Southern Boulevard for providing pizza for all of our volunteers, and Giant Eagle on Mahoning Avenue in Austintown for their donation of refreshments! FIGHT BLIGHT.

City officials are in discussions with a health-care company for the former Bottom Dollar Food building on Glenwood Avenue, the city’s economic development director said.

The city received the title last year to the 18,000-square-foot former grocery store, which opened in February 2012 and closed in late 2014. The city solicited proposals for repurposing the property and received two proposals in March.

The request for proposals subsequently generated interest from a third party that the city is in “ongoing conversations” and is working on finalizing terms, said T. Sharon Woodberry, director of community planning and economic development.

“We have who we believe is a very solid group that would invest into that facility or provide a service that would be needed for the neighborhood,” she said.

Woodberry identified the prospective user as a “health-care provider” but did not provide further details and said discussions were in the preliminary stages.

The city’s intent had been to convince a grocery store to open at the site.

At a special meeting today, the city’s Board of Control will vote on a license agreement with Big Dipper Food Co. to allow the company to use the building for warehousing and distribution through August. The Youngstown confection company was one of the two interested parties that submitted proposals for the site earlier this year. The other was from an area church.

Big Dipper Food officials remain interested in using that facility for the expansion of its operations, Woodberry said.

“They are aware that their proposal was not the one we selected but expressed interest if this doesn’t work out that they’re still interested,” she said.

To read the whole story from The Business Journal, click here. 

City council will consider a proposal today to pay $174,261 to the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. to supervise grass cutting, debris cleaning and boarding up at vacant structures.

The contract, which would need final approval by the board of control, is a 29 percent increase from the prior deal the city had with YNDC for the work. That contract was for $135,168. The new deal is retroactive to Friday.

The $39,093 increase is because the new contract is for 46 weeks while the old deal was for 35 weeks, said Ian Beniston, YNDC’s executive director.

YNDC will employ four supervisors, a management intern, about 15 workers from the Mahoning Columbiana Training Association – typically lower-income city residents between age 18 and 24 – and about a dozen AmeriCorps members.

In 2015, the first year of this program, 10,356 lawns at vacant properties were mowed and 553 empty structures were boarded up, Beniston said. That was with four supervisors and 20 MCTA workers.

In comparison, private contractors cut 2,900 lawns in 2014.

“This program was successful last year, and with more people and for a longer period of time, more work can be done,” said city Law Director Martin Hume. “We’re trying to maintain and beautify neighborhoods.”

The city sends bills of $150 per lawn to homeowners. While that’s more than $1.5 million in bills sent last year, the city collected only about $60,000 to $70,000.

Also today, the board of control will vote on contracts, worth about $4 million, to purchase garbage trucks and chassis to start its own residential garbage-collection service starting May 2.

The city expects to spend $2.2 million annually to run its garbage program. The city is finishing a $2.3 million contract at the end of this month that had Waste Management Inc. handle its garbage collection for 21,500 residential customers.

When the city sought a new contract with a private garbage hauler, the cost jumped to $2.8 million to $3.1 million leading to the decision to have the city do the work.

To read the whole story at Vindy.com, click here. 

City council authorized the board of control to sign a contract paying $174,261 to the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. to supervise grass cutting and cleanups at vacant structures.

Council voted 7-0 Wednesday on the ordinance.

YNDC will employ four supervisors, a management intern, about 15 workers from the Mahoning Columbiana Training Association – typically lower-income city residents between age 18 and 24 – and about a dozen AmeriCorps members.

In 2015, the year with YNDC having these responsibilities, lawns at 10,356 vacant structures were cut and 533 empty structures were boarded up, said Ian Beniston, the agency’s executive director.

That $135,168 contract was for 35 weeks. The new contract is for 46 weeks.

“A lot of phones [at city hall] ringing with complaints stopped ringing” last year because of YNDC’s work, said city Finance Director David Bozanich.

In 2014, private contractors paid by the city cut about 2,900 lawns.

Also, council voted to permit the board of control to sign a contract for up to $12.5 million with Anthem Health Insurance to continue to provide health insurance to city employees. The city has about 730 employees with about 60 of them not using its health-insurance plan.

Anthem originally proposed a 6.15 percent increase while other companies contacted by the city were seeking a 10 percent increase over the city’s current coverage plan, which expires April 30, said Rebecca Gerson, deputy law director.

The city was able to negotiate a 2 percent increase with Anthem, she said.

While the contract is for up to $12.5 million, the final total should be closer to $12.3 million, Gerson said.

In 2015, city employees paid deductibles for the first time. The higher the deductible, the less expensive the plan.

One plan has deductibles of $250 per person and up to $500 per family; another is $500 and $1,000, respectively, and a health-savings account option has deductibles of $2,600 and $5,200, respectively.

City employees pay 10 percent of the health insurance premiums.

Council, consisting of all Democrats, also approved a resolution urging the Republican-led U.S. Senate to consider President Barack Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to a vacant seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. Republican senators are refusing to have a confirmation hearing, saying the next president should decide who should be nominated to the high court.

To read the whole story at Vindy.com, click here. 

The city is negotiating a contract with a health care provider to purchase the former Bottom Dollar supermarket on the South Side.

The talks with ONE Health Ohio – which provides medical, dental and behavioral health services with a focus on lower-income people – are progressing well with the expectation of a deal being made, officials with the organization and city said Wednesday.

“We absolutely believe this is a strong project and that it will go forward,” said T. Sharon Woodberry, the city’s director of community planning and economic development. “We should have a deal by the end of the summer.”

“We’ve made a proposal and we’re interested in that property,” said Dr. Ronald Dwinnells, ONE Health Ohio’s chief executive officer. “We have the funds to purchase it. We’re ready at any time to purchase it.”

While he declined to discuss the price to buy the Glenwood Avenue building – and the city is having an appraisal done in June – Dwinnells said his organization would spend about $1.5 million to make the facility operational after a purchase.

It will take nine to 12 months after a deal is finalized for the facility to open, he said.

The city wanted to replace Bottom Dollar, which closed in January 2015, with another grocery store. But attempts to attract a supermarket to that location have been unsuccessful.

At the city’s request, ONE Health Ohio would have a food-distribution component to its facility if the deal is finalized, Dwinnells said.

“This will meet a need for that neighborhood and improve the quality of life there,” Woodberry said.

ONE Health operates six health care facilities in the area, including the Youngstown Community Health Center on Wick Avenue in Youngstown.

The city board of control signed a contract Wednesday with Big Dipper Food Co. Inc., a gourmet-candy company, to use the Bottom Dollar location to store and ship inventory through the end of August.

Big Dipper has offered to lease the property at $1,500 a month for six months with the option to purchase it for $180,000 anytime during that six-month period.

Big Dipper proposed investing $500,000 in equipment and improvements at the location for packaging and warehousing.

The deal doesn’t include Big Dipper paying any rent during the short-term lease.

If the deal with ONE Health doesn’t work out, Big Dipper would relocate to that location, Woodberry said.

Also, the board approved $4.1 million in contracts to get a city-run residential garbage collection serve up and running by May 2.

One contract with Premier Truck Sales and Rental Inc. of Cleveland for $104,000 is to rent eight garbage trucks for about two months.

The board also approved a $2,455,200 contract with R&R Inc. of Austintown for the purchase of eight new garbage trucks, an average cost of $306,900 per truck. The trucks should be done in two months, said Charles Shasho, deputy director of the city’s public-works department.

Another contract is to pay up to $375,000 a year to Republic Services Inc. in disposal fees at its landfill in Poland Township.

The other contract is for $1,149,542 with Cascade Engineering of Grand Rapids, Mich., to purchase garbage receptacles for each of its 21,500 residential garbage customers.

The city is hiring eight or nine drivers and a supervisor for the sanitation work.

To read the whole story at Vindy.com, click here. 

Youngstown officials are in discussions with One Health Ohio to open an community health center in the former Bottom Dollar Food building, a city official confirmed Wednesday afternoon.

One Health Ohio operates clinics targeting low-income individuals and families, including on the North Side and in Warren, Newton Falls and Alliance.

Sharon Woodberry, the city’s director of economic and community development, confirmed Wednesday that One Health Ohio working with the city on its proposal to open a health center in the former grocery store building on Glenwood Avenue.

“This is a deal that we believe will move forward. It’s just in its early stages,” she said. “We absolutely think this is a strong project that looks like it’s going to move forward. Both parties are motivated to make it happen.”

Earlier in the day, the city’s Board of Control approved a license agreement with Big Dipper Food Co. to use the building, 2649 Glenwood Ave., to store and ship inventory. The agreement allows the company, which makes peanut brittle and popcorn products, to use the building through late August.

Under the agreement, Big Dipper Food will pay for utilities and maintenance, Woodberry said.

“This particular agreement just allows use of the facility until the end of August. This is something that we believe will support a growing company to meet their needs for this short period of time,” she said.

Marty Seidler, Big Dipper Food co-founder, is “very appreciative and happy with this short-term arrangement that we were able to work with them on,” added Mayor John McNally.

“This will help them with a particular short-term contract for their business,” he added. “I’m hoping that we’ll be able to find them larger space s in the city to keep them and their employees here.”

Woodberry said she expects a deal to be in place by the end of summer with One Health Ohio.

“The timeline is being driven by a couple of things,” she said. The company is performing due diligence on the property, determining a budget to make it suitable for its needs, and what services would be provided at the center.

“There’s also an appraisal being done on the building. Once we have that appraisal and an estimated budget, then we’ll go before City Council with the project,” Woodberry said.

To read the whole story from The Business Journal, click here. 

Monday, April 25, 2016

The 10 members of AmeriCorps NCCC (National Civilian Community Corps) Team Maple 3 strengthened the capacity of YNDC to board up and clean up vacant homes in Youngstown from March 12th through April 21st.

During this time, they cut and painted nearly 1,500 boards to board up over 150 vacant homes, participated in two Volunteer Community Workdays and helped YNDC prepare for two additional events, laid over 20 cubic yards of mulch to improve landscaping for community signage, and cleaned out and prepped 2 vacant homes for rehabilitation. The NCCC team also removed over 4 tractor trailers full of blight and over 600 illegally tires. Their hard work over the past two months has created a lasting impact on Youngstown's neighborhoods.

AmeriCorps NCCC members stayed in YNDC's Community Revitalization House at 866 Canfield Road, and were the second NCCC team to stay in this facility since construction was completed in 2015. YNDC anticipates hosting an additional team this year in the later summer or early fall.

AmeriCorps NCCC strengthens communities and develops leaders through direct, team-based national and community service. Members work with nonprofits and other agencies across America to complete 6 to 12 week community service projects. More information about this program can be found here.

#REVITALIZE

One Youngstown house on Glenwood Avenue has been left to slowly decay, but thanks to some tender loving care by the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation, it could soon see new life.

The historic home has been vacant and blighted for many years, and the owner, who lives in Texas, was unresponsive to city code enforcement, according to the City of Youngstown. The city used a legal maneuver called spot blight imminent domain to acquire the property for fair market value, beginning the process in the fall of 2015.

Now, the property will be turned over to the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation, which will complete renovation on the property.

Ian Beniston, executive director of YNDC, said although uncommon, the spot blight action method could be used in the future.

“I think this will be a good test case,” he said. “It is a somewhat out of the ordinary property in terms of just being larger and a bigger project. There will probably be more opportunities, more modest.”

Beniston said the property is significant, because with so many historic homes disappearing, the south side is in danger of losing much of its culture.

To read the whole story from WKBN, click here.