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Non-profit makes plans to create veterans housing out of historic steelworker apartments
Group hopes to convert historic building into homes for veterans
By sarah lehr
campbell
When Tim Sokoloff, president and chairman of the Iron Soup Preservation Co., first set foot on Chambers Street, he encountered vacant apartment buildings overrun with weeds, trash and crime.
In 2009, the city applied to tear the apartments down, much to the consternation of local history enthusiasts. The apartments, built in 1918 to house workers for the Youngstown Iron Sheet and Tube Co., are on the National Registry of Historic Places as the first buildings built with prefabricated construction.
Sokoloff feverishly started writing letters and making phone calls, and was able to secure a moratorium on the tear-down. In 2007, he founded the Iron Soup
Preservation Co. which aims to preserve the apartments, nicknamed after the workers who made steel from molten “iron soup.”
Today, the ISPC owns 20 apartment units, four of which are being rented, Sokoloff said. Crime still is an issue on Chambers Street, though Sokoloff said it’s lessened since the installation of security cameras.
The ISPC has floated various ideas for the apartments’ future, including housing for students and oil and gas workers, but recently decided to turn the apartments into a housing complex for veterans. Other veterans-only housing projects have been successful because veterans like to live with people who share their experiences, Sokoloff said.
Susan Skrzynski, executive director of the Mahoning County Veterans Service Commission, said she personally would favor a mixed veterans and civilian community. “Some veterans do not want to live with only other veterans; they might feel like they were segregated from other people,” she said.
Skrzynski, who spent 25 years in the Army, said she thinks the ISPC will need to find private funding and expressed concern about the apartments’ lack of handicap accessibility.
“The Iron Soup Preservation Co. has made tremendous strides to rejuvenate that area of Campbell,” Skrzynski said. “I think the plan itself is a great idea, but we’ve got work on baby steps first.”
Funding is the project’s greatest challenge, Sokoloff said. The ISPC is hoping to win a Community Development Block Grant from Mahoning County. Sokoloff estimates it will take about $80,000 to renovate the 18 remaining units.
He said the ISPC is looking to make some of the apartments handicap accessible by installing a lift and converting stairs to a ramp, though there is not yet a time frame or cost estimates for those conversions.
Campbell Mayor William Vansuch last week said ISPC had not yet made the city administration aware of plans to convert the apartments into veterans housing. He has since said that city officials have been to Chambers Street to investigate and that he would support veterans housing – but that it’s too early for him to determine whether he would specifically support the ISPC’s plan.
“We’re still in the early stages,” said Linda Gens, board member and director of development for the ISPC.
Sokoloff envisions a self-contained community in which veterans, including veterans who are unemployed and disabled, could help out with tasks such as landscaping and gardening. He’d like to see veterans start moving in by the end of this year and anticipates they will pay rent on a sliding scale based on income.
Skrzynski expressed a hope that the ISPC eventually could provide Section 8 housing for low-income veterans. A third of homeless males in the United States are veterans, according to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans.
Sokoloff said it’s fitting that veterans should live in former steelworker homes and noted that the uniform “Iron Soup” buildings resemble army barracks. “Our opinion is, these are the homes that housed the guys that built America” he said. “Well, now we have the opportunity to house the people who defended America.”
The Sheet and Tube Co. built the homes, officially known as the Blackburn Plat, after a strike in 1916 to protest poor working conditions. Before the National Guard came in to quell the strikers, protestors burned half the business district of East Youngstown, which is modern-day Campbell. After the strike, the company decided it would be in its best interest to foster a more-contented workforce and provide housing, Donna DeBlasio, an ISPC board member and a professor of history at Youngstown State University, said.
By the standards of the time, the Iron Soup homes were exceptionally modern. They had hot and cold running water, indoor plumbing and electricity, which were practically unheard of luxuries for the working class.
Each unit is around 1,000 square feet. Sheet and Tube deliberately kept the units small to discourage workers from taking in boarders, DeBlasio said.