YMHA transfers properties to county land bank

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

The Youngstown Metropolitan Housing Authority board will ask the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s permission to transfer deteriorated, uninhabitable, scattered-site housing buildings from authority ownership to ownership by the Mahoning County Land Bank.

The land bank plans to use state funds to demolish these vacant, boarded-up buildings: 1514-16 and 1814-16 Elm St., 558 Parkwood Ave., 713-719 Thorn St., 108-118 W. Boston Ave., 3701-03 Erie St. and 203-209 Judson Ave.

YMHA had originally planned to demolish them at a combined cost of about $100,000, but HUD, which funds the authority, refused to pay to raze the buildings because the demolition cost would exceed the post-demolition land values.

The land bank is a nonprofit community improvement corporation, whose mission is to eliminate blight and return vacant land to productive use.