Youngstown finally moving on 10-year vacant house hazard after call from Vindy

YOUNGSTOWN

A dilapidated North Side house that had large portions of a brick chimney fall off its roof in a windstorm is coming down as soon as Thursday or Friday.

Paul Brown of Mineral Ridge said he was leaving 156 Halleck St. — where he was raised and is still the home of his 85-year-old mother — on Tuesday when about half of a 6-foot chimney next door at 160 Halleck St. crumbled and fell to the ground about 8 feet from him.

It was the latest problem with that house, vacant for almost a decade.

“The slate has been falling off the roof for three years,” Brown said. “In 2013, a piece fell off and hit me in the hand. When the chimney fell apart, the bricks hit my mother’s house, and several of them sunk into the ground.”

While the 98-year-old house has been stripped both inside and outside, and is falling apart, the city has continued to mow the lawn.

“There’s vacant houses all over, but if this one can do bodily harm, something should be done,” Brown said.

After Brown’s complaint, the city is doing something.

Contacted today by The Vindicator about 160 Halleck, Abigail Beniston, the city’s code-enforcement and blight-remediation specialist, said as soon as the electricity can be disconnected, the house will be demolished. That could come as soon as today or Friday and by early next week at the latest, she said.

Read more about the situation in Thursday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.