SitemapCity council will consider legislation Wednesday to permit the board of control to hire contractors for up to $1 million, from Youngstown’s American Rescue Plan funds, to demolish about 75 to 100 vacant houses. Council also will vote at its Wednesday meeting to allow the board to enter into a contract for up to $100,000 for asbestos testing on about 100 vacant structures.
The two proposals come from the $3 million city council set aside in ARP money to address issues with the worst vacant houses in Youngstown. After the two allocations, the fund will have about $500,000 left in it, said Michael Durkin, the city’s code enforcement and blight remediation superintendent. “By the end of this year, we’ll be pretty much at the end of the line with demos,” Durkin said. “After this, we’d have at the most, 50 houses that need to come down. It will grow a little. There will always be some, but it’s more manageable.”
More than 2,600 vacant houses have been demolished in Youngstown since 2017, according to statistics provided by Durkin. There were 621 taken down in 2017, 646 in 2018 and 513 in 2019. But it has slowed down since then, with under 250 annually between 2020 and 2022, and increasing to 264 last year, he said. City council approved using $8 million of the city’s $82.8 million ARP award on Dec. 15, 2021, for the abatement and demolition of properties throughout Youngstown.
The city kept the money set aside and didn’t do demolitions with the ARP money as it awaited word on an application for a grant through the Ohio Building Demolition and Site Revitalization Program. The Mahoning County Land Bank on Dec. 6, 2022, was awarded $6.9 million for demolition work, including $5.3 million to take down about 500 vacant houses in Youngstown. Of the 264 houses demolished last year in Youngstown, 176 came from city ARP funds, 27 were done by private property owners at their personal expense and 61 from the land bank, Durkin said.
The land bank will do more than 350 demolitions in the city this year and will finish the rest in 2025, Durkin said. The remaining $500,000 in the ARP demolition fund will either go toward more demolitions or could be reallocated by city council for other projects, Durkin said. The city has to allocate all of its ARP money by Dec. 31.
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