43
YMHA director plans ‘long-overdue’ study
Photo
Clifford Scott, YMHA executive director
The new executive is focused on safety and security.
YOUNGSTOWN — A new executive director and a comprehensive plan are expected to result in significant changes to the Youngstown Metropolitan Housing Authority.
The $125,000 study, to be finished next month, will review the authority’s 1,534 housing units and determine what, if anything, needs to be done with them. The EMG Group of Chicago is conducting the study of the agency, which oversees public housing for low- and moderate-income families in Mahoning County. Most of its units are in Youngstown.
This is the first “all-encompassing study” of its housing units ever done by the YMHA and is “long overdue,” said Clifford Scott, its executive director since May.
“We’re going to identify with the study what the market is [for our units] and we’ll assess our assets,” he said. “We need to know if our units are viable. If they’re not, the [YMHA] board of commissioners will decide to tear them down and replace them with housing that will attract people.”
Of its units, about 25 percent of them are unoccupied. Most of those empty units are at Westlake Terrace on and near Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and the Brier Hill facility, Scott said. Westlake was built in 1940 and Brier Hill was constructed in 1963.
“We need to make the determination if we have units that are obsolete,” Scott said. “The study will tell us if the market supports the units we currently have.”
Scott acknowledges “safety and security” problems at Westlake and Brier Hill, among others.
To help with those problems, YMHA increased its safety budget by more than $150,000 annually — and even “that’s not enough,” Scott said.
The money goes primarily to pay the Youngstown Police Department to have special late-night three-hour patrols of the agency’s housing projects, he said.
Without safety and security at the units, “you can build all you want” and occupancy levels won’t increase, Scott said.
Additional police patrols aren’t the only answer, he said.
Job creation programs are needed as is a closer relationship with the city, the school district and Youngstown State University, and residents need to get involved and let YMHA officials know about troubled tenants, he said.
Also, the authority hired a safety coordinator.
“We have a crime problem in our development,” Scott acknowledges.
Scott is a supporter of the city’s Youngstown 2010 comprehensive land use plan, and he said any housing units built by YMHA will comply with that plan.
If the EMG study calls for the demolition of outdated housing units, the YMHA board will follow through on the recommendations, he said.
“We have an opportunity with the recommendations in this study to move in a different direction as it relates to YMHA and its standing in the community,” Scott said. “We’re excited about rebuilding neighborhoods.”
If the study calls for changes, the authority is prepared to start breaking ground in January, he said.
“We’re looking at two to three years to build things,” he said. “We’re not talking five to 10 years. We’ll get the study, have the board assess it, and we’ll recommend moving forward.”
The cost of the improvements will be included in the EMG study with work done in phases.
The authority is putting the final touches on its Arlington Heights project, which received $19.75 million from the federal government in 2003. YMHA will complete construction shortly on the Arlington Heights Park and Fitness Center off U.S. Route 422 on the city’s North Side. The authority plans to turn the facility over to the city to operate it.
Scott, 36, served as Section 8 director at the Kansas City housing authority for more than a year before coming to Youngstown. Scott also worked as director of New York State’s Section 8 program, the third-largest housing agency in the country, and as a principal with a real estate firm dealing primarily with affordable housing.
Section 8 is a program funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that assists low-income families with rent.
A friend of Scott’s who works as a policy analyst for a housing officials trade publication recommended he seek the Youngstown job.
“It’s a challenge here,” said Scott, who added he likes challenges. “This community had mass population losses. The economic problems of this community are known nationally.”
Scott said he was drawn to Youngstown for two other reasons: ex-YSU football head coach Jim Tressel, now at Ohio State University, and Jay Williams, the city’s mayor.
Scott played quarterback in the early 1990s for the University of Buffalo, and lost a game in 1993 to YSU, then led by Tressel.
“He had so much success coming here and he’s an inspiration to me,” Scott said. “We had an on-the-field talk and he gave me words of encouragement. He’s somebody you can look up to.”
It doesn’t hurt that Scott is a “big football guy.”
His father, George, was an 11th-round draft pick in 1959 for the New York Giants. His father played seven games for the Giants that year as a halfback who also returned punts and kickoffs. The team lost the championship that season to the then-Baltimore Colts.
As for Williams, Scott said, “The mayor is a young guy who could have stayed in the banking business and been very successful. Instead, he is working to help the city as mayor.”
Williams had kind words for Scott.
“My initial impression of Clifford Scott is that he is very committed to building upon the successes of Eugenia Atkinson [whom he replaced as executive director] while also taking YMHA into a more modern direction,” Williams said. “I look forward to working with him during his tenure at YMHA.”
skolnick@vindy.com