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7,000 vacant properties in Warren to be studied
TweetBy Ed Runyan
WARREN
The nonprofit Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership has been awarded a $356,964 U.S. Housing and Urban Development grant to take inventory of Warren’s 2,000 vacant residential properties and 5,000 vacant lots.
The inventory will provide a database of housing information that will help the city prioritize the steps that will follow, said Mayor Michael O’Brien.
Assessments of each parcel will “help locate the best parcels for investment in order to return land to neighborhoods in ways that are accessible, sustainable and healthy” for the community, O’Brien said.
Matt Martin, director of the one-year-old Trumbull Neighhorhood Partnership, said he believes Warren received the grant because of the large list of neighborhood groups working to improve the city’s neighborhoods.
It is also important that the neighborhood groups have now been organized through an umbrella group called the Warren Neighborhood Leadership Council, Martin said.
Trumbull County also was only the second county in Ohio to create a land bank, Martin said.
The county land bank makes it easier for vacant and abandoned properties to be purchased by new owners so the properties can be used more productively, Martin said.
Doug Franklin, who will become mayor Jan. 1, said the Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership inventory will be a good implementation of the city’s 2009 comprehensive plan, which was written by the Poggemeyer Design Group.
Because the inventory will involve public meetings throughout the city, all residents of Warren will be encouraged to participate in the project, Martin noted.
The inventory, which will begin in early 2012, will also involve an update of the city’s zoning code “in order to remove barriers to forward-thinking neighborhood change,” Martin said.
Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership was created with money from the philanthropic organization Raymond John Wean Foundation.
Comments
Better to spend the $356,964 tearing down the boarded up eyesores. Why study what we already know - they need torn down and the green space will never be built upon again besides don't they pay the ex-mayor's son, Dan Sferra Jr. $29 an hour to do this same work?
Why can't the welfare folks count the houses? I think they can count.
The Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership is another nonprofit corporation organized through the efforts of the Wean Foundation. The former executive director of The Wean Foundation was the agent for this corporation, which uses the Wean Foundation address as its own.
The same individual was the agent for the Mahoning Valley Organizing Collaborative and the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation. All are involved in the vacant property issue.
The Wean Foundation has funded these organizations which eventually find a way to obtain tax dollars for programs of questionable value, such as the garden projects administered by the YNDC.
Kirk Noden, who formed the MVOC and the YNDC with Joel Ratner of Wean, also is a board member of the Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership. He was trained in the Salinsky method of community organizing in Chicago, went to Birmingham, England to organize there, and then came to Youngstown to head ACTION, only to move on as the Executive Director of the Mahoning Valley Organizing Collaborative at an annual salary of $70,000.
Noden also formed the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a organization closely aligned with labor organizations, especially the Service Employee International Union SEIU, and has been active in the effort to defeat Senate Bill 5.
These are not grassroots organizations, they were well planned, well funded by the Wean Foundation, and work hard to get their hands on tax dollars.
When Shel Trapp died in 2010, Kirk Noden made the following statement: "...Shel Trapp was one of the greatest organizers I ever knew and he and his wife Anne were close friends to Rosi and I. We used to get breakfast every two weeks during my first year of directing an organization in Chicago. He drank tea and only ate a piece of toast, smoked incessantly, cussed at me a lot, and loved me like a son. He will be missed. "
October 20, 2010 at 3:41pm
Shel Trapp was one of a small group of legendary organizers – all men – who emerged from Saul Alinsky’s Chicago-based school of organizing. The approach changed the way poor and disenfranchised people achieved power to improve their neighborhoods. By replacing advocacy by experts with collective direct action by the victims themselves, organizing harnesses – and liberates – the power of communities and the spirit of individuals; it builds relationships and leadership to confront systemic injustice. The methodology includes creative thinking from the gut, leading to innovative tactics that engage large numbers of members, who turn out to induce shock and awe in misbehaving politicians and institutions – yielding victory. At least in theory, and often in practice.
Oiling the political machine and fleecing the taxpayer continues without regard. Do as much as you can to as many people as you can and call it community organizing.
You guys would complain about a sunny 72 degree day in February.
This isn't hard to understand. The grant provides enough money to inventory the vacant lots and structures so a plan can be made to deal with them.
The inventory and resulting plan will lead to more grant money that allows the plan to be put into effect.
Why waste time and money tearing down a house here and there? Focus on what is best and go after it. You can't do that without knowing how many structures and lots exist and where they are. That's why you need an inventory.
A message to DwightK
This isn't about a sunny 72 degree day, it is about people who complain about tax breaks for the rich, yet burn tax dollars that they are able to get - you guessed it - from tax breaks on investments by nonprofit organizations such as the Wean Foundation.
The taxpayers are already funding an enormous bureaucracy in Youngstown that should be doing what these nonprofits say they need to do. The City of Youngstown and probably the City of Warren have organizational elements that would be able to spend Neighborhood Stabiliaztion Funds without the assistance of nonprofits.
You make the issue of spending limited funds on vacant properties sound like it is brain surgery, it isn't.
In addition to the bureaucracy of the cities, the county has a Treasurer's office which needs to keep on top of delinquent property taxes more consistently than they have in the past.
There is no need for nonprofits, a misnomer if I have ever heard of one, to be involved in the business of government.
A great waste of money!