$350K grant, new leader to help Warren clean up blight

Staff report

WARREN

The Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership board of directors has begun a grant program designed to stabilize and grow Warren’s residential neighborhoods with the hiring of Marissa Williams as community planning coordinator.

The partnership received $356,964 through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Challenge Grant Program in 2011 to operate the program.

The grant will allow the nonprofit organization and city of Warren to evaluate homes and develop a strategic demolition policy. Factors to be considered include rehabilitation, demolition and subsequent vacant-land reuse, according to a TNP press release.

Occupied properties also will be inventoried and assessed, and the program includes a review and update of the city’s zoning code.

“With so many vacant houses and lots in the city, we need a comprehensive plan,” said Matt Martin, TNP program director. “We need calculated analysis that will create strategic priorities for addressing blight. If we tear down just one house on a street that needs 10 demolitions, we’ve made virtually no impact on that street.

“If we rehab a property next to a derelict vacant house, we’ve made no real improvement. And if we don’t have a plan for vacant land reuse after houses have been torn down, the city will be mowing a lot of grass for a very long time. HUD saw this need and gave Warren funding for TNP to develop these critical strategies.”

A recent graduate of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Williams has a master’s degree in social administration.