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City wants to use more funds for demolition
By DAVID SKOLNICK
YOUNGSTOWN
City officials say they plan to persuade the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to allow Youngstown to use more than 10 percent of a grant it will receive to stabilize neighborhoods for demolition.
HUD announced last Wednesday that Youngstown would receive $1,096,328 in the third round of its Neighborhood Stabilization Program.
Only 10 percent of the money can be used for housing demolition.
The demolition of rundown and vacant houses is what the city needs the most to help its neighborhoods, said Bill D’Avignon, the city’s community- development-agency director.
The city administration will seek a waiver to use more than 10 percent of the money for demolition, he said.
The 10-percent cap can be waived, said Brian Sullivan, a HUD spokesman.
“There is some wiggle room,” he said. “It’s up to HUD’s discretion. Youngstown will give its plan to HUD, and they can seek a waiver at that time. It’s up to Youngstown to craft a strategy.”
The city has about 600 to 1,000 residential houses in need of demolition.
Being able to use only 10 percent of the $1.09 million for demolition would not adequately address that need, D’Avignon said.
“Any time we can get additional money for the city, it’s good,” said Councilman Jamael Tito Brown, D-3rd. “The question is how best to use the funds. The need should determine how we spend the money. We need to lobby and advocate for a greater percentage for demolition.”
Councilman DeMaine Kitchen, D-2nd, said: “You can’t be disappointed with getting money. We were hopeful with our past record we would have received more. I’m hopeful we can get a waiver on 10 percent.”
The funds in the most-recent round, like the first round in October 2008, were formula-based, so Youngstown, as one of Ohio’s most-populated cities, was guaranteed money.
The city failed to receive any Neighborhood Stabilization Program funding in the competitive second round of funding in January.
Meanwhile, it looks as if the city’s “deconstruction” initiative will end because of a lack of additional funding, D’Avignon said.
The city received a $39,000 grant from the federal Environmental Protection Agency a year ago for deconstruction.Deconstruction systematically takes apart a dilapidated house by removing portions of the structure, such as entire wood floors or chunks of brick, rather than using a traditional wrecking ball.
The city hired Steve Novotny, a former planning department intern, who wrote the EPA grant, for $30,000 to develop a deconstruction policy last year.
The city used money from NSP’s first round to deconstruct nine houses and will have another nine down in the next two months or so.
It costs about $2,000 more to deconstruct a house compared with traditional demolition, but the items can be sold to reduce the expense, D’Avignon said.
The company that did the deconstruction work, US Green Building Materials, is “not finding the market at this point” for the materials, D’Avignon said.