Trumbull to increase demolition of homes

By ED RUNYAN

runyan@vindy.com

WARREN

Heidi Blumenstock’s Front Street Southwest neighborhood demonstrates the reasons why Trumbull County officials asked the federal government to use an additional $743,528 to demolish vacant structures.

Blumenstock’s house off of Tod Avenue and a short distance south of West Market Street has two vacant lots beside it.

The grass has grown to about 6 inches, but that’s better than when the two vacant houses were there.

“It’s better because of the people in the houses — vandalism, a fire and rats,” Blumenstock said.

Before Warren used some of its $1.4 million in federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program money last year to tear down the two homes, they were a source of irritation.

They were constantly vandalized, the siding was removed, and teens were going inside. Eventually, the teens started a fire.

Now those problems are gone.

“It looks empty, but problem-wise, it’s good,” she said.

Now the main issue is keeping the grass cut. The owner of the two lots had it cut once this summer, and Blumenstock said she occasionally cuts it, too, because her children are safer playing in that area than in their own small front yard.

Her friend, Jason Dan of Southington, who works in Warren, said it’s good that the city removed some of the blight by taking houses down, but there’s so much more that needs to be done.

“There are too many broken- down houses,” he said. “It’s sad because I can remember 20 years ago, the entire city of Warren was nice.”

A 2009 study said Warren had 3,000 vacant homes — about 15 percent of the housing stock — and growing.

But Warren’s NSP program demolished 258 homes over the past 18 months — 158 of those in southwest Warren, including Front Street.

Lori Lemasters, the city’s NSP coordinator, said 57 more homes are coming down this year.

The city health department still has 260 more homes on a list of homes that the board of health has ordered demolished.

Lemasters says the number of vacant and blighted structures in the city makes it seem at times as if the demolition effort isn’t making much headway, but “every little bit helps,” she said.

“It’s better to have 258 structures down than to have them falling in,” she said, adding that she has seen areas where the neighbors next to a demolished structure have improved their property or used the vacant lot in a positive way.

Julie Green, grants coordinator for the Trumbull County Planning Commission, has run the NSP program for the county, which used about $1.8 million to demolish 146 structures in 2010.

Those were located in townships and villages throughout the county, plus in the cities of Niles, Girard and Cortland.

The city of Warren didn’t receive additional money for the latest round of NSP money — Round 3 — but Trumbull County was awarded $1.1 million more.

But the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development wanted Trumbull County to use most of that money to provide housing assistance to low-income residents.

But in February, Green asked HUD if Trumbull County could instead use 65 percent of the money for additional demolitions. HUD approved that request in June.

In a 25-page document, Green laid out the economic turmoil that has struck Trumbull County over the past decade, causing homes to be abandoned as residents fled.

The most striking statistic was a 22 percent reduction in the number of employed people between January 2001 and June 2010 — a loss of 17,333 jobs — from 78,766 to 61,433.

Trumbull County lost 12,135 high-paying manufacturing jobs between June 2002 and June 2010 — almost half of the manufacturing jobs that paid $25,000 or more, Green said.

Green is in contact with township and city officials in nine areas to be targeted for the next round of demolitions — parts of the cities of Warren, Hubbard and Niles and Girard and parts of the townships of Brookfield, Hubbard, Howland, Newton and Liberty.

Officials there are helping Green identify the approximately 100 structures that will be torn down starting next year, she said.

The targeted areas were selected based on a variety of data, Green said. Among them were household income, vacancy rates, foreclosures and percentage of residents targeted for predatory lending practices.

The other $285,972 from NSP Round 3 will be spent on rehabilitating homes. Counting the homes rehabilitated in Round 1 and Round 3, they include structures in Girard, Warren, Brookfield, Liberty and Howland. Five of the 10 were in Liberty.