Neighborhoods

Tuesday, April 6, 2021

On Tuesday, April 6, Premier Bank awarded YNDC with a $25,000 grant for the Community Financial Empowerment Initiative.

This program includes YNDC’s housing counseling and serves as the foundation for the YNDC’s comprehensive community development model aimed at increasing economic opportunity and quality of life for traditionally underserved city residents, including increased financial stability, quality affordable housing, and asset building.
As a HUD-Approved Housing Counseling Agency, YNDC offers pre- and post-purchase one-on-one counseling services and online education, to assist low- to moderate-income city residents identify and overcome barriers to homeownership, including inadequate savings, income, credit history, and understanding of the home buying process and prepare them for future homeownership, and to provide existing low- to moderate-income homeowners with resources to maximize their limited incomes and minimize repair costs so that they can avoid foreclosure and improve their living conditions.
Many thanks to the Premier Bank for their support of this critical free service! 

Premier Bank presented a $25,000 check to the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation Tuesday.

The money will be used for the agency’s Housing Counseling Program, which provides counseling to individuals who want to improve the quality of their housing. Issues could include purchasing a new home or improving their rental housing.

To see the full story from WKBN, click here.

Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. received $25,000 from Premier Bank to support their housing counseling program.

The program assists clients with identifying and resolving the barriers to home ownership.

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

The program which started in 2014 helps hundreds of people each year by teaching things like budgeting for basic financial needs and even literacy.

A $25,000 check from Premier bank is helping people in the Valley become successful homeowners.

The money is going to the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation's Community Financial Empowerment Initiative.

To see the full story from WFMJ, click here.

Want to know the organization setting the tone for Youngstown’s revitalization, look no further than the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation.

From renovations, to helping residents become homeowners, to delving into commercial to help create complete neighborhoods, YNDC is changing the way residents feel about where they live. Executive Director Ian Benison and Housing Director Tiffany Sokol sat down to talk all this and their favorite area gems. Enjoyed with some  Noble Creature courtesy of Ian. 

To listen to full podcast from Homes and Hops, click here.

If you can't beat 'em, buy 'em. 

A Youngstown, Ohio, nonprofit has been following that strategy by reaching out — sometimes in a threatening tone — to absentee landlords who own vacant neighborhood eyesores. The message the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. sends is simple: If you don't want to fix your property then sell it to us. Or, even better, donate it.

A frequent target of the letters: out-of-state and foreign landlords, said Ian Beniston, the development corporation's executive director.

"We do see a direct correlation between out-of-state owners and the condition of properties," Beniston said. "And it's not a good correlation."

 In the past 10 years, Beniston said, his group has acquired 157 formerly-vacant properties — many that had been owned by out-of-state or foreign landlords.

To listen to full podcast from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, click here.

Monday, April 19, 2021

On Friday, April 16, Citizens Bank awarded YNDC with a $10,000 grant for the Community Financial Empowerment Initiative.

This program includes YNDC’s housing counseling and serves as the foundation for the YNDC’s comprehensive community development model aimed at increasing economic opportunity and quality of life for traditionally underserved city residents, including increased financial stability, quality affordable housing, and asset building.
As a HUD-Approved Housing Counseling Agency, YNDC offers pre- and post-purchase one-on-one counseling services and online education, to assist low- to moderate-income city residents identify and overcome barriers to homeownership, including inadequate savings, income, credit history, and understanding of the home buying process and prepare them for future homeownership, and to provide existing low- to moderate-income homeowners with resources to maximize their limited incomes and minimize repair costs so that they can avoid foreclosure and improve their living conditions.
Thank you to Citizens Bank for their support of this critical free service!

It's Thursday, April 15, 2021, and thanks for the feedback after my Tuesday column about how the city might spend its $88.6 million in federal stimulus funds.

I've received emails, texts, Facebook comments proving that most people are thoughtful  — and know more than I do. 

Facebook folks say "Borts field needs a redo ... pave the damn streets in downtown ... open up the parks ... "

Not everyone shared my view. Eric Broviak said in an email: "So instead of grand concepts like an enterprise zone (think Chill Can Plant) the city really could use some better roads and cleaned up areas."

Rick Ostheimer wrote on Facebook: "I have emailed the Mayor and my Councilperson suggesting the city use the windfall to fund the remaining sewer and wastewater treatment projects already agreed to in its consent agreement with the OH EPA. That would result in turning over the benefits to residents in the form of lower sewer bills than currently anticipated."

Always a Youngstown thought leader, Ian Beniston, executive director of the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation, wrote: "I think significant funding needs to be spent on housing: blight elimination, home repair for low income homeowners, a housing construction and renovation fund to provide gap funding to developers to incite more and much needed housing development and vacant renovation, down payment assistance and additional code enforcement and rental registration inspectors."

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

Jennifer Roller is the president of the Raymond John Wean Foundation. Headquartered in Warren, Ohio, the Raymond John Wean Foundation’s mission is to advance community-building in Warren and Youngstown, Ohio, through grantmaking, capacity building, convening, and partnerships.

One of the foundation’s strategic goals is to increase the economic opportunity and mobility of residents in both cities. Jennifer Roller has been with the foundation since 2007 and became its president in 2014.

In our conversation, Roller discusses some of the issues surrounding race that communities in the Mahoning Valley face. While the African American community makes up 8 percent of Trumbull County’s population, 66 percent of the population in urbanized Warren, Trumbull County’s seat, is African American. Similarly, African Americans make up 43 percent of urbanized Youngstown, while its county, Mahoning, is 16 percent African American. These two urbanized areas experienced unemployment and poverty more acutely than the rest of the Valley. In Youngstown, for example, unemployment for African Americans is three times higher than it is for white workers. Furthermore, the poverty rate in Youngstown is 36 percent, more than two times higher than that of the county as a whole. 

In the summer of 2020, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests that followed the murder of George Floyd at the hands of the police, both Warren and Youngstown joined thousands of other municipalities around the country in declaring racism a public health crisis. Both communities hope that these events serve as catalysts to address a history of systematic racism and inequality in the region. —Quilian Riano, In the Mahoning Valley chief editor

Explore these related features: Read more about the future of work in the region in a profile of Building a Better Warren. Learn more about efforts to support employee-owned enterprises.

Quilian Riano (QR): As you partner with groups all over the Mahoning Valley, what are some projects or ideas you think are laying the groundwork for the future of work in the area? 

Jennifer Roller (JR): Notwithstanding the Raymond John Wean Foundation’s annual investment of $2.5 to $3 million, the needs of this community—one that has experienced severe and consistent underinvestment for at least the last 40 years—persist. To achieve its greatest impact, the Foundation focuses its investment in the cities of Warren and Youngstown, Ohio. 

If you consider the low rates of educational attainment and high unemployment, especially for Black people, there is reason to sound the alarm. Though if we are intentional in our approach, we can promote progress and eventually growth. For example, members of several sectors of community leadership were accepted to and have committed to participation in the national model, Communities of Excellence, a systems approach to achieving a high level of community performance. Regionally, the Fund for Our Economic Future, of which several Mahoning Valley foundations are members, has created an alliance of funders to advance economic growth and equitable access to opportunity.

Along with these approaches are notable local efforts: Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation and Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership, community development corporations created through public–private partnerships that embody resident engagement–centered models to revitalize our neighborhoods. And Inspiring Minds Warren, a Black-led organization that delivers academic and cultural enrichment, with an explicit commitment to the uplift of Black people. These groups are doing what it takes to ensure a different, better community: mining for data and being transparent about what it reveals, seeking and incorporating community voices, collaborating across sectors, and tracking and measuring progress. 

To see the full story from The Architectural League NY, click here.

PREMIER DONATES TO YNDC: Premier Bank recently donated $25,000 to Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation.

The funds will be used for the Community Financial Empowerment Initiative, a program that includes YNDC’s housing counseling and serves as the foundation for YNDC’s comprehensive community development model aimed at increasing economic opportunity and quality of life for traditionally underserved city residents.

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