Neighborhoods

Banks filing expedited foreclosures on abandoned and vacant properties will no longer be able to use plywood to board up those houses.

All other properties, however, can still use plywood under a law signed Wednesday by Gov. John Kasich, a Republican. The law takes effect in 90 days.

Confusion over the bill had some believing the law banned the use of plywood on all vacant properties.

But the law specifically requires a plywood ban only on “a mortgagee who files a foreclosure action on a residential property [that files] a motion with the court to proceed in an expedited manner under this section on the basis that the property is vacant and abandoned” in “order to proceed in an expedited manner.”

State Rep. Michele Lepore-Hagan of Youngstown, D-58th, who co-sponsored the bill, said it’s designed only for banks with expedited foreclosures. The banks would be required to use clear boarding, a clear polycarbonate on windows and doors.

“There is nothing in the bill for any other organizations requiring them to not use plywood,” she said.

Plywood has been an industry standard for securing vacated housing for so many decades the very act of doing so is called “boarding up” the property.

Because of so many amendments added by the Republican majority to the original bill, it can be confusing as to what the it includes, said state Rep. John Boccieri of Poland, D-59th, who also co-sponsored the bill.

“By its passage, [the bill] was lit up like a Christmas tree,” he said. “But that amendment is only for expedited bank foreclosures.”

To require other entities to use clear board would be a financial disaster, said Ian Beniston, executive director of the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp., which boards up vacant structures in the city.

“Clear plastic would cost $1,200 to $1,500 on a house that’s going to be demolished and isn’t worth the cost of the materials,” he said. “It’s 10 times the cost of plywood. It would be bad policy to require everyone to stop using plywood.”

Robert Klein, founder of Cleveland-based clear board maker SecureView, said the Ohio law makes a bold statement against urban decay.

“This is a significant advancement for those engaged in the battle against neighborhood blight in Ohio,” Klein said. “Plywood is an outdated solution to a growing modern-day problem.”

To read the full story from the Vindicator, click here.

Friday, January 6, 2016

YNDC is proud to announce the publishing of its 2016 annual report!

The annual report highlights the work of YNDC over the past twelve months. An electronic copy can be downloaded below and hard copies are available in the YNDC office. For more information please contact the YNDC via email at info@yndc.org or via phone at 330.480.0423.

Many cities are finding that something as simple as installing a split rail fence around a cleared and mowed vacant lot not only fights urban blight, it can help fight crime.

Inspired by a program in Philadelphia, cities such as Cincinnati, Houston and New Orleans are using heavy equipment to clear, grade and seed thousands of vacant lots, believing that empty properties with head-high weeds, scrubby trees, trash and debris are excellent hiding places for guns, drugs and criminal activity. After the initial cleanup, cities partner with neighborhood groups and nonprofits to care for the lots, or in some instances sell them to people who agree to maintain or develop them.

Installing a fence around a vacant lot can make a huge difference by signaling that although a lot is vacant, it isn’t abandoned. The theory, akin to the “broken windows” philosophy of policing, is that minor crimes, such as littering and vandalism, are signs of social disorder that often invite more serious crime.

“Without it, it’s as if the property has no ownership and it’s open to any sort of activity,” said Debora Flora, executive director of the Mahoning County Land Bank in Youngstown, Ohio, where 23,000 parcels of land are vacant.

The cleanup effort has been spurred by an explosion of vacant property, especially in Rust Belt cities like Youngstown, Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit, where populations have declined or the 2008 foreclosure crisis swelled the number of vacancies. Detroit has more than 6,000 vacant lots it offers for urban agriculture or as solutions to urban runoff. Chicago has nearly 13,500 lots that are city-owned and is selling them for $1.

In New Orleans, the widespread devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 made the cleanup of vacant property a huge, ongoing undertaking. There, the city has a program called Lot Maintenance Plus, part of its NOLA For Life murder reduction strategy. Lot cleanups not only remove potential crime locations, they provide employment to at-risk youth.

In Philadelphia — where the LandCare program maintains 12,000 lots, or more than a quarter of the city’s vacant lots that have been graded, seeded and fenced since 2004 — cleaning up and caring for empty property has proven to decrease crime and save the public money.

A 2016 study by the University of Pennsylvania’s Urban Health Lab showed that fixing up vacant lots reduced nearby gun violence by 5 percent, and putting functioning windows and doors in abandoned houses, instead of boarding them up, cut nearby gun violence by 39 percent. The study also found that every dollar Philadelphia spends on fixing up vacant lots saves taxpayers $26 in reduced costs from gun violence.

Clearing vacant lots may have other positive effects. Research indicates that adding green space to crowded urban settings improves mental and physical health. And cities realize vacant property can be a lingering problem if not dealt with because in many areas real estate markets will not rebound any time soon.

“I think that’s the driving factor: the recognition that this is going to be a long-term problem and they’ve got to do something more than what they’re doing,” said Alan Mallach, senior fellow at the Center for Community Progress, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that studies vacant land revitalization. “We can’t assume that in a matter of a year or two somebody’s going to put up a new townhouse or a new office building.”

The Philadelphia Model

Philadelphia’s LandCare program is considered a model. The city runs the $2.9 million program through the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, which in turn hires contractors or neighborhood groups to maintain the lots. It found that some fences make for better neighbors and better results than others.

When LandCare launched, it put chain link fences around the cleared lots. But it soon discovered that the barriers kept neighbors from using the land for anything other than a place to toss trash. By switching to split rail fences, the space could be used by kids to play near their homes. That led residents to start asking for other lots to be remediated.

“They call into City Council and they say, ‘We want the fence.’ Before City Council understood what it was or what the program was, they were just hearing about the fence,” said Keith Green, LandCare director. “It was like magic: you get this fence in there and it’s going to be maintained.”

Youngstown also puts up accessible fences on cleared lots. “We love fences,” says Liberty Merrill of the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation, which works on vacant land improvement. “Dumping is a huge problem here. You have to keep cars off the lots or it will wreck a lot of work you’ve just paid for.”

The city of Houston modeled its vacant lot maintenance program on Philadelphia’s. Mow Down began as a pilot program in 2013 and now covers 261 lots with the goal of doubling that number annually, said Reggie Harris, deputy assistant director of Houston’s Department of Neighborhoods.

Houston contracts with the nonprofit Keep Houston Beautiful, which in turn works with neighborhood groups who mow vacant lots for $50 a cut. The local groups don’t have to go through the red tape of qualifying as city contractors and the city — which would have to pay a contractor at least $300 for the same service — saves money.

Harris says he sees the difference already on streets where gangs used to congregate on untended property. “They’re not there anymore, because there’s a clear path to see them,” he said. “They don’t sit at the end of that street like they used to. Somebody can see them a whole block away.”

Cincinnati’s Approach

Cincinnati last year stepped up its Private Lot Abatement Program, clearing more than 1,200 properties in the most recent fiscal year that ended July 1. City manager Harry Black said the city also raised fines for overgrown grass and building code violations and began using its power to take over problem properties through a “chronic nuisance” ordinance, backed by data collection and analysis.

And in February, the city launched a police initiative that focuses not just on arrests. It focuses also on removing blight in violence-plagued locations as a way to prevent crime from recurring, said Cincinnati Police Lt. Matt Hammer, who leads the initiative.

In the city’s East Westwood neighborhood, at an intersection where shootings were frequent, a wildly overgrown lot concealed a back stairway to a vacant house, making a “comfort space” for a thriving drug market, Hammer said. Police found guns hidden in the tall grass.

Arresting the drug traffickers was one step, Hammer said, but the second was to clear the vacant lot so a new dealer wouldn’t set up shop in the same place and to force the property owner to bring the vacant house up to code. Since the lot has been cleared, shootings in the area have fallen from 14 in 2015 to five in 2016.

A trash-strewn lot is the archetype of the broken windows philosophy: a small amount of disorder that leads to bigger problems. But since the broken windows approach has become associated in many cities with aggressive policing of minor crimes that disproportionately affects minorities, some city officials who are tackling blight to prevent crime don’t call it that.

“Broken windows approaches are extremely reactionary in nature,” said Black, the city manager. “We are being more strategic and intentional about what we target, how we target, how we address resources. Broken windows is old-school incremental.”

Cincinnati has begun using its data analysis capabilities not only to identify blighted target areas, but to predict what properties may soon become blighted, creating an algorithm that includes building and health inspections, citations, police calls and property values.

“We’re not descending on that area like an invading army and writing up everybody that’s got a blade of grass an inch over” the limit, said Mark Manning, the city attorney who heads enforcement of the city’s chronic nuisance ordinance, under which Cincinnati can require a property owner who gets too many citations to come up with a remediation plan or lose ownership.

“We’re not telling everybody to fix everything in sight,” Manning said. “These are truly things we think are contributing to violence.”

Charles Branas, the University of Pennsylvania epidemiologist who studied vacant lot cleanup and violence, said fixing blighted property is an uncontroversial route to fighting crime at a time when gun control legislation, for instance, is difficult to enact and police tactics such as stop-and-frisk have been harshly criticized.

“In the world of gun violence prevention for cities, there aren’t a lot of options out there,” Branas said. “This is an apolitical option. The gun lobby has no opposition to this stuff. It’s not in any way changing legal possession of firearms.”

Cost-Effectiveness

Saving public money can help sell cleanup programs, Philadelphia’s Green said. “Having a number like ‘For every dollar you invest $26 comes back to taxpayers’ is a lot clearer for people,” he said.

Taxpayers do front the money: vacant land improvement programs use public money to clean up not just city-owned lots, but private property that bad owners have neglected. And that can be “a really tough call,” said Mallach of the Center for Community Progress.

“On the one hand, philosophically you don’t want to reward bad guys for being bad guys,” Mallach said. “On the other hand, every time you have a bad guy who’s not maintaining the property, it’s affecting the neighbors. You do it because you want to avoid harm to the neighbors.”

To recoup costs, Philadelphia bills property owners for the cost of the cleanup. In Houston, the Mow Down program files a lien on the property to cover the cost of maintaining it. Those involved with vacant lot cleanup say the expectation is low of collecting reimbursement on a vacant property without much resale value. “It’s really hard to collect on these bills, regardless,” says Amber Knee of the LandCare program.

To read the full story from PBS Newshour, click here.

Many cities are finding that something as simple as installing a split rail fence around a cleared and mowed vacant lot not only fights urban blight, but it can also help fight crime.

Inspired by a program in Philadelphia, cities such as Cincinnati, Houston and New Orleans are using heavy equipment to clear, grade and seed thousands of vacant lots, believing that empty properties with head-high weeds, scrubby trees, trash and debris are excellent hiding places for guns, drugs and criminal activity. After the initial cleanup, cities partner with neighborhood groups and nonprofits to care for the lots, or in some instances sell them to people who agree to maintain or develop them.

Installing a fence around a vacant lot can make a huge difference by signaling that although a lot is vacant, it isn't abandoned. The theory, akin to the "broken windows" philosophy of policing, is that minor crimes, such as littering and vandalism, are signs of social disorder that often invite more serious crime.

"Without it, it's as if the property has no ownership and it's open to any sort of activity," said Debora Flora, executive director of the Mahoning County Land Bank in Youngstown, Ohio, where 23,000 parcels of land are vacant.

The cleanup effort has been spurred by an explosion of vacant property, especially in Rust Belt cities like Youngstown, Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit, where populations have declined or the 2008 foreclosure crisis swelled the number of vacancies. Detroit has more than 6,000 vacant lots it offers for urban agriculture or as solutions to urban runoff. Chicago has nearly 13,500 lots that are city-owned and is selling them for $1.

In New Orleans, the widespread devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 made the cleanup of vacant property a huge, ongoing undertaking. There, the city has a program called Lot Maintenance Plus, part of its NOLA For Life murder reduction strategy. Lot cleanups not only remove potential crime locations, but they also provide employment to at-risk youth.

In Philadelphia - where the LandCare program maintains 12,000 lots, or more than a quarter of the city's vacant lots that have been graded, seeded and fenced since 2004 - cleaning up and caring for empty property has proven to decrease crime and save the public money.

A 2016 study by the University of Pennsylvania's Urban Health Lab showed that fixing up vacant lots reduced nearby gun violence by 5 percent, and putting functioning windows and doors in abandoned houses, instead of boarding them up, cut nearby gun violence by 39 percent. The study also found that every dollar Philadelphia spends on fixing up vacant lots saves taxpayers $26 in reduced costs from gun violence.

Clearing vacant lots may have other positive effects. Research indicates that adding green space to crowded urban settings improves mental and physical health. And cities realize vacant property can be a lingering problem if not dealt with because in many areas real estate markets will not rebound any time soon.

"I think that's the driving factor: the recognition that this is going to be a long-term problem and they've got to do something more than what they're doing," said Alan Mallach, senior fellow at the Center for Community Progress, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that studies vacant land revitalization. "We can't assume that in a matter of a year or two somebody's going to put up a new townhouse or a new office building."

The Philadelphia model

Philadelphia's LandCare program is considered a model. The city runs the $2.9 million program through the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, which in turn hires contractors or neighborhood groups to maintain the lots. It found that some fences make for better neighbors and better results than others.

When LandCare launched, it put chain link fences around the cleared lots. But it soon discovered that the barriers kept neighbors from using the land for anything other than a place to toss trash. By switching to split rail fences, the space could be used by kids to play near their homes. That led residents to start asking for other lots to be remediated.

"They call into City Council and they say, 'We want the fence.' Before City Council understood what it was or what the program was, they were just hearing about the fence," said Keith Green, LandCare director. "It was like magic: You get this fence in there and it's going to be maintained."

Youngstown also puts up accessible fences on cleared lots.

"We love fences," says Liberty Merrill of the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp., which works on vacant land improvement. "Dumping is a huge problem here. You have to keep cars off the lots or it will wreck a lot of work you've just paid for."

The city of Houston modeled its vacant lot maintenance program on Philadelphia's. Mow Down began as a pilot program in 2013 and now covers 261 lots with the goal of doubling that number annually, said Reggie Harris, deputy assistant director of Houston's Department of Neighborhoods.

Houston contracts with the nonprofit Keep Houston Beautiful, which in turn works with neighborhood groups who mow vacant lots for $50 a cut. The local groups don't have to go through the red tape of qualifying as city contractors, and the city - which would have to pay a contractor at least $300 for the same service - saves money.

Harris says he sees the difference already on streets where gangs used to congregate on untended property. "They're not there anymore, because there's a clear path to see them," he said. "They don't sit at the end of that street like they used to. Somebody can see them a whole block away."

Cincinnati's approach

Cincinnati last year stepped up its Private Lot Abatement Program, clearing more than 1,200 properties in the most recent fiscal year that ended July 1. City manager Harry Black said the city also raised fines for overgrown grass and building code violations and began using its power to take over problem properties through a "chronic nuisance" ordinance, backed by data collection and analysis.

And in February, the city launched a police initiative that focuses not just on arrests. It focuses also on removing blight in violence-plagued locations as a way to prevent crime from recurring, said Cincinnati Police Lt. Matt Hammer, who leads the initiative.

In the city's East Westwood neighborhood, at an intersection where shootings were frequent, a wildly overgrown lot concealed a back stairway to a vacant house, making a "comfort space" for a thriving drug market, Hammer said. Police found guns hidden in the tall grass.

Arresting the drug traffickers was one step, Hammer said, but the second was to clear the vacant lot so a new dealer wouldn't set up shop in the same place and to force the property owner to bring the vacant house up to code. Since the lot has been cleared, shootings in the area have fallen from 14 in 2015 to five in 2016.

A trash-strewn lot is the archetype of the broken windows philosophy: a small amount of disorder that leads to bigger problems. But since the broken windows approach has become associated in many cities with aggressive policing of minor crimes that disproportionately affects minorities, some city officials who are tackling blight to prevent crime don't call it that.

"Broken windows approaches are extremely reactionary in nature," said Black, the city manager. "We are being more strategic and intentional about what we target, how we target, how we address resources. Broken windows is old-school incremental."

Cincinnati has begun using its data analysis capabilities not only to identify blighted target areas, but also to predict what properties may soon become blighted, creating an algorithm that includes building and health inspections, citations, police calls and property values.

"We're not descending on that area like an invading army and writing up everybody that's got a blade of grass an inch over" the limit, said Mark Manning, the city attorney who heads enforcement of the city's chronic nuisance ordinance, under which Cincinnati can require a property owner who gets too many citations to come up with a remediation plan or lose ownership.

"We're not telling everybody to fix everything in sight," Manning said. "These are truly things we think are contributing to violence."

Charles Branas, the University of Pennsylvania epidemiologist who studied vacant lot cleanup and violence, said fixing blighted property is an uncontroversial route to fighting crime at a time when gun control legislation, for instance, is difficult to enact and police tactics such as stop-and-frisk have been harshly criticized.

"In the world of gun violence prevention for cities, there aren't a lot of options out there," Branas said. "This is an apolitical option. The gun lobby has no opposition to this stuff. It's not in any way changing legal possession of firearms."

Cost-effectiveness

Saving public money can help sell cleanup programs, Philadelphia's Green said.

"Having a number like 'for every dollar you invest, $26 comes back to taxpayers' is a lot clearer for people," he said.

Taxpayers do front the money: Vacant land improvement programs use public money to clean up not just city-owned lots, but also private property that bad owners have neglected. And that can be "a really tough call," said Mallach of the Center for Community Progress.

"On the one hand, philosophically you don't want to reward bad guys for being bad guys," Mallach said. "On the other hand, every time you have a bad guy who's not maintaining the property, it's affecting the neighbors. You do it because you want to avoid harm to the neighbors."

To recoup costs, Philadelphia bills property owners for the cost of the cleanup. In Houston, the Mow Down program files a lien on the property to cover the cost of maintaining it. Those involved with vacant lot cleanup say the expectation is low of collecting reimbursement on a vacant property without much resale value.

"It's really hard to collect on these bills, regardless," says Amber Knee of the LandCare program.

To read the full story from the Herald Dispatch, click here.

Ian Beniston wants Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. to keep doing this year what it did in last year – but more of it. That means not only increasing the scope of its programs but adding a new one.

Beniston, YNDC executive director, looks to the progress the organization made in 2016 as he charts its course for this year. The “overall volume of the work we completed” last year ranges from the counseling households and small-business clients YNDC to the number of houses either rehabilitated or boarded up and “the infrastructure we continue to build with our partners,” he said.

“I anticipate from the work that we’ve done in 2016 being able to get even more done in 2017,” he said.

YNDC’s annual report, released this week, lists its achievement, which include:

Grass cutting and maintenance at 2,923 blighted houses — 12,254 mowing efforts, more than four times the total in 2014 the year before when YNDC took over the citywide cutting program.

Housing and small-business counseling provided to 189 clients.

The rehabilitation of 23 vacant properties, and 12 rehabilitated houses sold to owner occupants.

Five microloans awarded to businesses.

641 vacant properties cleaned, boarded and secured.

Over the past two years, YNDC has devoted more resources and efforts to improving vacant properties, Beniston said. This year, for example, it expects to renovate “by a significant number a larger number of vacant properties,” he said.

He also wants to see the organization mow more yards and increase the number of mowings as well. “That may seem like a trivial thing, but for someone who lives next to a property with high grass, that makes a big impact,” he said.

For several years, the Youngstown Warren Regional Chamber and Small Business Development Center at Youngstown State University have offered classes to those interested in starting a business and entrepreneurs who just set out in a venture.

Last year, YNDC started offering one-on-one counseling for clients. “We saw that there was a gap,” Beniston said. “There wasn’t really an organization filing that role and we already provided financial literacy and financial counseling to individuals in housing or home ownership, so it was a capacity we already had.”

Some entrepreneurs might have had a good business plan but faced challenges securing financing and other aspects where the YNDC could help them, he continued. Of the 181 individuals who took part in general small-business programs, 48 received one-on-one counseling. Microloans issued ranged from $500 to $10,000.

Among the entrepreneurs who received both counseling and financial help from YNDC is Iba Diaw, owner of Saf Sap Products. His company, in business five years, sells hot sauce that Diaw makes at the Common Wealth Kitchen Incubator on the North Side.

In addition to providing a $10,000 loan, YNDC helped Diaw write a business plan. “They helped me also find a strategy to market my products,” he said. Saf Sap now markets its products nationwide, he reported.

KBC Kidz, a party-planning business that focuses on events for children, also received counseling and a $6,000 loan that it used to buy supplies such as inflatables and rides, reported owner Keyonna Trevathan. The Youngstown business has been operating since 2013.

YNDC “taught us how to build our business credit,” she said, and how to keep that separate from her personal finances, she said.

While it is continuing the counseling program, YNDC is discontinuing its microlending.

“We had difficulty finding qualified candidates,” even with favorable loan terms, said Liberty Merrill, YNDC land reuse director, who also oversees the business education programs. In addition, YNDC has a list of lenders to which it can steer business owners, she said.

“The financial counseling really has been helpful,” she said.

This year, YNDC is launching the Iron Roots Community Supported Agriculture Program, which will allow members to buy fresh produce directly from Iron Roots urban farm and other local growers.

Subscribers will receive fresh vegetables and fruit in season for 20 weeks, from June 13 to Oct. 31.

YNDC added the program after Grow Youngstown discontinued its community supported agriculture efforts, Beniston said. “It’s another way for us to make the produce available and provide good, healthy produce to people here locally,” he said.

Selling produce though a share-supported farming is more “financially stable” than relying on shoppers to buy it through a YNDC stand at a farmers market, Merrill said.

Working with other farmers will allow YNDC to offer more varieties than can be supported in the limited space at Iron Roots, she said.

To read the full story from the Business Journal, click here.

To listen to the full story from the Mahoning Valley Podcast, click here.

Local leaders should know by late summer the results of an application for a federal grant to implement a multifaceted plan to address crime in a targeted area on the South Side.

A partnership that includes Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp., the city of Youngstown, the city police department and Youngstown State University’s Regional Economic Development Initiative is seeking the grant from the Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation Program.

The $850,000 grant, if awarded, would be used to implement strategies developed for a cross-sector plan to reduce crime in an area bordered by Hillman Street, Interstate 680, Shady Run Road and East Midlothian Boulevard, identified as having the concentration of crime in the city.

Hotspots for crime identified within that area include the Market Street and South Avenue corridors, the Cottage Grove area and the Taft neighborhood.

“This is a huge project but if we can get that grant award it will definitely be huge for this part of the city,” said Ian Beniston, YNDC’s executive director. The idea is to identify root causes of crime and put plans in place to address those drivers, he said.

“It’s a group effort of several different components to eliminate blight and improve living conditions in the targeted areas,” said Police Chief Robin Lees.

Much of what YNDC does – and the city as well – is try to improve the quality of life in the city, Mayor John McNally said. “It really starts on the main corridors and peels off into the neighborhoods,” he continued.

The strategies, developed using a $155,522 Byrne planning grant awarded in 2015, include increased police presence, small grants to businesses to pay for safety improvements, blight elimination, vacant lot improvements and initiatives such as youth sport leagues and after-school programs to give kids something to do as an alternative to antisocial behaviors.

The strategic plan is “largely completed” and is now being reviewed by the Local Initiatives Support Corp., a technical assistance provider for the Department of Justice, Beniston said. He anticipated approval in 30 days with only “minor tweaks” required, he said.

“We will incorporate their feedback and then submit for final approval to the Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance,” he said.

On Thursday, the city Board of Control approved a partnership agreement memorandum of understanding between the city, Youngstown Police Department and YNDC for the purpose of participating in the implementation process.

“The police department, will through extra patrols, step up enforcement in the areas affected and try to again help stabilize the area as YNDC engages in rehabilitation to the areas as well,” Lees said.

YPD worked with YSU to analyze the data to determine the target area for the grant, said Capt. Jason Simon, the department contact for the initiative. They reviewed 10 years of data, he said.

In addition, YNDC monitored YNDC canvassers as they surveyed homeowners and performed security assessments and made recommendations to businesses on the South Side, he said.

“A lot of it is very simple things,” Simon said. Some of the recommendations included addressing lack of lighting or adding security cameras, which now are available inexpensively, he said.

Seven businesses were provided small grants from the Byrne grant to address crime prevention issues, Beniston said. Funds also were used to hire the canvassers.

Last year the city in conjunction with the state resurfaced South Avenue from Williamson Avenue to East Midlothian and upgraded curbs and traffic signals along the corridor, McNally said. This year, the city will move forward on $75,000 in greening projects on the roadway and pursue demolition of some properties, part of the 518 structures he said last week he wants to take down this year.

Among the South Avenue structures the city is looking at taking down is the three-story former Colonial Letter Shop building, he said.

“We’re trying to figure out how we’re going to get that down,” he said. Structures would be demolished using demolition or environmental sanitation money, not funds from the Byrne grant, McNally said.

To read the full story from the Business Journal, click here.

Marguerite Douglas is a long time resident of the Lincoln Knolls area located on the Eastside of Youngstown, Ohio.

Marguerite has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Criminal Justice from Youngstown State University. She currently serves on the Board of the Lincoln Knolls Community Watch as Financial and Correspondence Secretary. She is a community activist and advocate for residents in and around her neighborhood. Marguerite is an active and dedicated member of the Committed to Truth Gospel Choir. She is deeply passionate about assisting others spiritually, socially, economically and physically according to their needs to enhance their quality of life.

Several events are scheduled Monday in the Valley in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

A free Community Workshop is scheduled from 8:30 a.m. to noon at First Presbyterian Church, 201 Wick Ave., Youngstown.

A worship service, musical performances and scripture readings from Muslim, Jewish, and Christian faiths, are part of the program.

The Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation is holding a Day of Service.

Volunteers will board up vacant houses, clean up yards and streets in the Wick Park and Crandall Park neighborhoods.

“The way I see it is Dr. King took action when he wanted to see change. This is a way for people in Youngstown to do something to change the way Youngstown is – to better Youngstown,” said Giavonna Cappabianca, organizer.

Everyone is invited to help. Anyone interested can meet the volunteers on Elm Street at 8:30 a.m.

The American Red Cross will install free smoke detectors Monday for residents in Youngstown.

Four teams of volunteers will go door to door beginning at 9 a.m. to hand out the detectors and educational fire safety materials.

The effort is part of the American Red Cross Operation Save a Life program.

The goal of the initiative is to decrease fire fatalities in the U.S. by 25 percent.

In Trumbull County, a Martin Luther King Jr. seminar is scheduled from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at New Jerusalem Fellowship, 2555 Palmyra Rd. S.W. The top for the forum is “Social Justice in the Aftermath of the Election.”

The YWCA of Warren will host a community Forum titled “Building Bridges in Community Leadership.” The event begins at noon at the YWCA, 375 N. Park Ave. The panel will include representatives from the NAACP, Greater Warren-Youngstown Urban League, Trumbull county African-American Achievers Association, and the Warren Civic League.

To read the full story from WKBN, click here.

As Cardinal Mooney High School renovates its building, the school is also turning its attention to the surrounding neighborhood.

Cardinal Mooney is two-thirds of the way through a $5 million renovation, much of the building’s exterior has already been redone.

Now, Mooney is buying up vacant properties around the school. It recently purchased 15 from the city and the Mahoning County Land Bank for $250 each.

Cardinal Mooney President Mark Oles says for many years Mooney was in Youngstown but not a part of it. Now, he wants to change that culture.

“So, definitely working with the neighborhood groups like YNDC, CCA, Green Youngstown, there’s so many opportunities where we’re not carrying the whole burden but everybody’s sharing the burden,” he said. “We’re part of the leadership teams to make it happen. Our students and our parents are committed to the neighborhood. We want to beautify it because Youngstown is on the rise and there are great things happening here.”

Mooney will initially focus its efforts on Laclede and Dewey Avenues, which are near the school.

The plan is to eventually help redevelop the neighborhood between South Avenue and Market Street.

To read the full story from WKBN, click here.