Monday, February 02, 2015WARREN, Ohio -- The Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership spent 2014 “returning derelict vacant properties to productive use,” helping residents become homeowners, restoring houses, encouraging urban farms and more healthful diets, its executive director, Matt Martin says.
In its 12-page annual report, released Friday, the partnership recapped its community outreach efforts, urban farm activities, and work with the Trumbull County Land Bank as it razed dilapidated vacant houses, improved and restored other houses, and helped Warren residents become homeowners.
Staff and volunteers accomplished much of this work and staff directed 105 participants in court-ordered community service to perform other work. Ninety participants completed 2,920.5 of the 6,681 hours the Warren Municipal Court assigned, the report says. Another 15 directed by others courts -- Trumbull County Common Pleas, Mercer County, Pa., Canon Municipal and the Ohio Adult Parole Authority – performed 587.5 hours.
A total of 7,695.5 hours were assigned with 3,508 completed.
Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership had a budget of $560,635, the report says, which it exceeded by $665. Nearly 40% of its income came from the Raymond John Wean Foundation and banks that serve Warren while just under 59% came from program income.
The Ohio Housing Finance Agency awarded a $3.2 million grant to raze 250 vacant houses “in 11 strategic target areas in 2015,” the report says.
Operating expenses accounted for $102,187 of its income, the balance on nine programs the partnership operates.
Throughout 2014, TNP staff held more than 250 meetings with residents to learn their needs and their priorities in improving their neighborhoods. Concerns ranged from education, crime and blight to high grass on vacant properties.
The partnership played a role in the sale of 70 improved properties last year, eight as private demolitions and 68 as deed-in-escrow sales. Thirty-three of the latter were to owner-occupants, 35 to investors and three were developer agreements.
The partnership told of its role in reclaiming the Hughes mansion, 634 N. Park Ave., that the AMG Foundation in Youngstown will spend $500,000 this year to convert to veterans’ transitional housing.
The Hughes mansion, built in 1877 in the Queen Anne style, had long sat empty, the partnership relates. It launched a multimedia campaign to find a buyer and eventually chose AMG to restore the house. Along with the multimedia effort, volunteers worked to cleanup the property inside and outside.
SOURCE: Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership.
Published by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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