Iron Soup homes project takes off for homeless vets

CAMPBELL

Melvin Blackburn moved into a fledging Veterans Village on Chambers Street in Campbell just days ago, but he already describes the program as being “like a close-knit family.”

Blackburn graduated from high school in Warren in 1987 and then spent two years in the armed services.

He is exactly the kind of resident the Iron Soup Historical Preservation Co. – ISHPC – aims to attract as part of its efforts to shelter homeless veterans, said Tim Sokoloff, president and founder of ISHPC.

Sokoloff formed ISHPC in 2010, hoping to rescue a forgotten piece of local history. He was concerned about the fate of a row of historic Chambers Street buildings, first built in 1918 as company homes for Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. workers.

The company built the row homes after a massive strike that marks its centennial anniversary this year. In protest over poor working conditions, steel-company employees rioted and burned down much of East Youngstown, which is modern-day Campbell.

Historians say the Iron Soup homes, a push from the company to mollify workers, represented an early form of corporate welfare.

In the decades since Youngstown steel went belly-up, however, the Chambers Street homes largely fell into disrepair.

That’s where the ISHPC came in.

Over the span of about five years, the nonprofit organization has purchased 20 of the 130 “Iron Soup” units and kicked off the dirty work of making them livable again.

Several ISHPC plans for the apartments’ future fell through, but this latest initiative has hit the ground running.

So far, rwo veterans now live in renovated Iron Soup apartments.

For more on the project, read Saturday's Vindicator or Vindy.com.