The DDN reports that the fed $$$ isn't enough to address the abandonment problem:

 

City Needs Millions More to Raize Nuisance Housing

 

DAYTON — City leaders say the $28 million Dayton has received in federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program funds to aggressively target neighborhoods hit hardest by foreclosure will only make a small dent in the growing list of vacant and deteriorating properties...

 

...Housing officials estimate they will need an additional $20 million to $30 million in funds — money the city does not have — to deal with the remaining vacant housing stock

 

Man, I'm glad I took all those neighborhood pix during the late 2000s.  Some of the stuff I posted here over the years has been or will be torn down.

 

Maybe I should start a blog called The Dayton Documentation Project (subtitled: "Documenting the city before they tear it down").

 

Anyway, the Jerry Springer "postive homily at the end of the show" article about how Daytonians doing this self-help effort to "keep an eye" on derelict houses...

 

Dayton Encourages Neighbors to Be Vigilant

 

 

We’re encouraging grass-roots efforts,” said city manager of housing inspection Max Fuller, who tells residents they can help by picking up trash, shoveling walks, mowing vacant lots and generally keeping an eye on the vacant structures in their neighborhood. “If you see suspicious activity of any kind at a vacant property, boarded or unboarded, call the police; call housing inspection,” Fuller said.

 

There was also an earlier article on how the city mismanaged the  first round of Neighborhood Stablization Program funding, not tearing down as much as they wanted to due to difficulties contracting out the demolition work.

 

 

 

I can only imagine how many homes could have been nicely rehabbed instead of torn down with all of that demo money?  Even if only a portion was used to rehab, and the other used to demo only in targeted areas where things will never come back, or are suited to other uses.  In the context of the city as a whole, and shrinking populations, they should demo only in areas that will reduce city obligations to maintain infrastructure and services, with an eye toward eventually eliminating that certain area period.  While other areas are targeted for rebirth.  If all they do is demo sh*t, there wont be anything left, and there wont be anything left to establish a tax base.

Heres a bit on how the demolition program got stalled:

 

...only 250 houses torn down...

 

@@@

 

I can only imagine how many homes could have been nicely rehabbed instead of torn down with all of that demo money?

 

I think they are tearing down the worst properties, and I suspect the condition of housing in Dayton is pretty bad.  Back in January I was briefly at a party hosted by a guy who restored a house in one of the historic districts.  It took him seven years to fix the place up (and he did a nice job, too).  That's the level of effort it takes to do this work, by someone who was doing it as a labor of love vs economic reality. 

 

The economic reality is that the reno cost is too much given that there is a very limited marekt for city living in this area and the condition of housing is, apparently, pretty bad to start with due to the slobs who live here and greedheads who own and rent the properties.  Sometimes one and the same.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Has there been discussion in Dayton about embarking on the same path as Detroit? IE, a deliberate program of "de-urbanization" and the creation of green space out of slums? To me this sounds piecemeal.

To me, it sounds like Dayton and Youngstown are on similar paths, except Dayton got a lot more federal aid.

 

I like Detroit's version of the smart shrinkage idea.  But, at least in Youngstown, no one is willing to point to an area and say "we don't need that area anymore, so lets stop providing services there."  And, the city is unwilling to rehab specific areas for the same reasons they are unwilling to de-urbanize an area.  Essentially, elected officials are afraid of accusations of unfair treatment.  So, demolition remains piecemeal throughout the city.

 

The YNDC (Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp.) is able to target certain neighborhoods for rehabilitation, but that's because they aren't affiliated with the city.

Dayton is also like Detroit in that it still as a region has sizable economic power that moves ever further from the core w/ each passing recession. My sense is the wealth and energy region is moving South and East. Suburban Detroit is still a massive economic engine that only makes the emptying core that much harder to fix.

Has there been discussion in Dayton about embarking on the same path as Detroit? IE, a deliberate program of "de-urbanization" and the creation of green space out of slums? To me this sounds piecemeal.

 

There has but I think they are doing the demos by a priority system, with houses that are surrounded by occupied houses coming down first, so it will be piecemeal.  I seem to think there was going to be a prioritization of certain neighborhoods (Five Oaks and the North Main Street area getting a lot of demo money), but the graphics accompanying the articles don't show that, so maybe those plans have changed.

 

I recall they were going to offer the vacant lots (for a price of some sort) to the neighbors, either as a whole lot or lot split, so you'd start to see "double lots" develope if the neighbors claim the vacant properites...the neighborhoods would become more large-lot and less dense.  Which could be a good thing.

 

Or there'd be infill stuff replacing torn-down houses.  I think I posted on that a while back, the infill effort in the "Findlay" area (my name for the district) on the east side, between Linden Ave and Findlay Street.

 

From what I can tell there is quite a bit of replacement housing going in in certain parts of the city, which indicates there is apparently a policy decision somewhere in City Hall to not go with land-banking and neighborhood decommissioning.  A concept which has political issues (as has been noted), but is fun to play with as a design or planning theoretical exercise.

 

Yet the issue, as the article notes, is there are way more "nuisance properties" (and that number is growing) than there is demo money.

 

So the problem might just be getting worse and the city is actually on the start of the "Detroitification" process, with the Fed $$$ making an initial dent in the vacant/nuisance inventory, but the inventory itself growing.

 

Eventually this inventory will start to turn into "Brush Park" ruins, but in wood since quite a bit of Dayton is built in wood, which I guess more like that neighborhood around the Heidelberg Project.  A mix of vacants, ruins, occupied units, and vacant lots,  with the housing stock mostly out of wood.

 

 

 

 

 

Dayton is also like Detroit in that it still as a region has sizable economic power that moves ever further from the core w/ each passing recession. My sense is the wealth and energy region is moving South and East.

 

With Wright-Patterson and it's bevy of defense contractors and consultancies the energy is definetly east.  You should drive by I-675 and Fairfield Road/Grange Hall Road interchange sometime (the WSU/Fairfield Mall area) to see how that edge city has developed, especially now they are putting up that new mid-rise hospital. 

 

Brave New (suburban) World.  Dayton is off in the distance somewhere to the west, far away and long ago.

 

 

 

Dayton is deep in the Detroit process. Total per capita applications for NSP demolitions exceeded Detroit, and even New Orleans. Dayton might be top in the country for this wave of de-urban renewal. It's not just houses either. Dayton has an incredible number of urban commercial structures slated for demolition. I can see the argument that Dayton's small wooden houses don't have a chance, but the commercial buildings should be saved if the city wants any chance of a comeback. It's true Dayton avoided the temptation to land bank, but that might not be a good thing. The city's goal is to reduce overall density. Density is already too low, so this strategy just seems nuts to me. Dayton was slower on this process than was expected in 2010, but there is a good chance it will pick up steam this year as the economy recovers.

 

Vacant property has been a major issue for several years in Dayton. The overall vacancy rate is almost a staggering 25 percent, with some neighborhoods having rates pushing 40 percent. There are an estimated 6,000 vacant lots in the city and 15,000 vacant structures. To stabilize its neighborhoods, the city plans to target NSP funds on blight removal through demolition, and to use a shrinking cities strategy, by increasing green space rather than building new homes on vacant lots.

 

http://www.clevelandfed.org/Community_Development/topics/NSP/Dayton_OH_NSP.cfm

 

It's plain to see what Dayton is hoping to pull off:

 

Total Planned Demolitions Using NSP2 Funds

 

Dayton: 1,621 buildings

Cleveland-Cuyahoga County: 995 buildings

Cincinnati-Hamilton County: 874 buildings

Toledo: 272 buildings

Springfield: 150 buildings

Columbus: 100 buildings

This is Urban Renewal Part Deux

Naw, urban renewal replaced older urban development with new suburban development.

What is happening now is replacing older suburban development with greenspace.

 

Dayton is deep in the Detroit process.

 

No it is not.

 

To be "deep in the the Detroit process", means Dayton is in the middle of an era of "Devils Night" type widespread arson and the city is bulldozing houses into their cellars.  This isn't happening just yet, though arson is picking up.

 

Where we are now, is that the city has this big inventory of vacancies in varying degrees of decay.  To-date there have been ongoing efforts in a few neighborhoods..namely, Twin Towers, that "Findlay" area I posted about, parts of the "Inner West", and even "Lower Dayton View", to put replace teardowns and vacant areas with replacement housing, plus the city has advocarted lot splits or people aquiring adjoining vacant lots (not sure how widespread or "implemented" this is.

 

So the city...or local quangos and nonprofits...have been pushing back.

 

I think the implications behind the article, and why I said Dayton is at the start of a Detroitification proces, is that these efforts (along with the neighborhood stabilization program federal money) won't be enough to make a dent in the inventory of "nuisance properties", not to mention vacant properties which, perhaps, have not yet become "nuisances".

 

Eventually some vacancies will find there way back into the housing market, perhaps as rentals.  Others will add to the inventory of nuisance properties, and they will deteriorate into ruins (or get arsonized) if not torn down. 

 

So the city is probably quite some time away from the "Detroit" end-state, and probably wont really get that bad since there are still some sucessfull gentrification areas for mostly white yuppie/"BoBo"/hipster/bohemian types.  But there is not enough of this "Creative Class" city people to make enough of an impact to reverse much beyond what's already underway for them. 

 

There are also "Palmer Park" type areas of solid housing for the African-American middle class...since its mostly black folk who live in these areas.  "Areas" being the neighborhoods on either side of Cornell, west of Salem (east of Salem is another matter), which is still one of the better areas in the city in terms of housing stock.

 

Plus the good old white "average Joe" element still is holding out along Smithville Road, in Belmont. and parts of Linden Heights.  One big difference between Dayton and Detroit is that the whites didn't flee en-masse in the 1970s, leaving a half-empty city to fall apart, the way they did in Detroit. 

 

So there is are some local twists to this tale that means Dayton probably won't collapse to the degree Detroit did.  But there are going to be problems due to the vacancy wave that is swamping the city.

 

@@@@@

 

C-Dawg talks about vacant commercial properties.  I wish the intel on this was better so we know how much is industrial/warehouse and how much is retail. 

 

This is where the big impact could be as you'd have larger areas in terms of square feet and acreage to to be torn down.  I think the city has made a big dent already in tearing down old industrial buildings.  A lot is gone even during my time living here, enough to where the city doesn't seem so "loft factory rust belt" as it might once have.  Even the things that are still standing are only fragments of once much larger industrial plants (DELCO @ 5th/3rd Field and the old Stoddard-Dayton buildings west of Keowee, btw Keowee and Wayne).

 

They could probably tear down more, but so far the city has done a fairly good job of clearing old factory sites.

 

What happens to vacant commercial that is retail could really change the appearance of the city.  Tear down enough of these old buisness corners and the "urban" character of Dayton will be lessened.  This has already happened in a few locations, which are probably unrecognizable compared to what they were like in the 1940s or 1950s. 

This is Urban Renewal Part Deux

 

This is true to some degree.  Maybe this approach vindicates the theory behind urban renewal?

 

There's a good book on the subject that is quite applicable to Dayton.  just finished it:  Doug Rae, "City: Urbanism and it's End".  About New Haven, but could be about any smaller industrial city.