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Cash crunch keeps Hubbard Twp. from razing more blighted houses
By robert Guttersohn
Hubbard
A burned-out township home that has sat charred and dilapidated for more than two years will be demolished next month.
Hubbard Township Trustee Fred Hanley said the township discovered the home at 3397 Pothour Wheeler Road had insurance, and the insurance company paid the township $6,300 to demolish it.
But the Pothour Wheeler home is only one of 23 foreclosed and condemned properties the township wants to demolish, but the township cannot find the money to tear them down, and some of them look bad.
“They aren’t even coming out to cut the grass,” Hanley said of the businesses that own the properties. “I’ve had to go out and cut the grass of private property.”
Township officials hoped that a Neighborhood Stabilization Program Grant would pay for demolition of eight structures on the list, but the areas surrounding the homes are not deemed low-income, said John Pieton, township zoning administrator.
Hanley said the previous resident of the Pothour Wheeler home died, and the property fell into disrepair. Then the home went up in flames more than two years ago. Investigators never found a cause, Hanley said.
The township’s legal counsel, Atty. Mark Finamore, did a title search and found PNC Bank was the mortgage holder.
After notifying the bank of their intentions to demolish the structure, PNC Bank called the township saying it was interested in fixing up the home.
“I asked the attorney for PNC if she had actually seen the house, and she said no,” Hanley said. “There’s no floor. It burned through the roof.”
Fred Solomon, spokesman for PNC, would not comment on strategies the bank uses for foreclosed homes but did say that they strive to keep up the home and try to sell it.
David Klacik, of Klacik Real Estate and former president of the Youngstown Columbiana Association of Realtors, said foreclosures are spotty throughout the Valley, and he regularly sees out-of-state banks “lose sight” of their properties, unintentionally allowing them to fall into disrepair.
On the other hand, “local lenders have a very good handle on their properties,” he said.
Hanley said several foreclosed vacant houses in the township are salvageablebut unless they are repaired, the coming winter may leave them unfit to live in.