Cincinnati City Council has passed unanimously an ordinance creating five new project accounts for the disbursement of U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) funds.
The five new NSP accounts will allow for hazard abatement and demolition, purchase and redevelopment, affordable housing creation, additional financing mechanisms, and program administration in the neighborhoods of Evanston, Northside, East Price Hill, West Price Hill, Westwood, South Fairmount, Avondale, Madisonville, Bond Hill, and College Hill.
The City is receiving nearly $8.4 million as part of the $3.92 billion 2008 Housing and Economic Recovery Act to provide funding for communities to purchase foreclosed or vacant properties and to rehabilitate, re-sell, or demolish and redevelop them for homeownership.
The modified NSP Action Plan will result in the demolition of 166 housing units, the acquisition of 62 housing units, the rehabilitation of 51 housing units, and 31 units of new construction.
Previous reading on BC:
Neighborhood stabilization funding to be tweaked (5/13/09)
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Cincinnati creates accounts for HUD stabilization funds
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3 comments:
Do we REALLY need to demolish 161 Houses as part of this plan? At an average cost of 8-12K per building? Cincinnati still clings to a 'blight=bulldozer' mentality which just about every forward thinking city and Urban planning department has long since abandoned! The "detroit' urban planning model was a failure. We do not need to repeat their mistakes.
Demolition should ONLY be used a last resort and then only on non contributing, non historic structures! It is far more cost effective to provide restoration facade grants and fix up these properties. A vacant lot contriburtes nothing to the architectural integrety of a neighborhood nor expands the county taxbase.
I wonder out of the 166 houses to be demolished, how many of those could really be fixed-up instead. Maybe this would be a great opportunity for training and employing people in restoration/renovation. You can be sure anything built new will not compare visually to the old and will stand out like a sore thumb especially if it is for low income.
I am sorry to see the city is demolishing so many buildings. This could be taken a an opportunity to take part in President Obama's original "Emerald City" plan to make "sick buildings well" by restoration and weatherization. I recently purchased on of the structures that previously slated to be demolished for practically nothing. This strategy definitely deserves rethinking.
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