Campaigns

Vacant Properties

The City of Youngstown is home to over 4,500 vacant structures and over 22,000 vacant lots, which creates one of the highest vacant property rates per capita in the United States. The problem in the Mahoning Valley is of epidemic proportion and continues to consume neighborhoods. The current approach to addressing vacant properties in the Mahoning Valley is reactive, intermittent, fragmented, and a financial burden. The lack of an effective system decreases residents’ quality of life, discourages reinvestment, and contributes to the continued trends of depopulation and disinvestment.

It is time for the Mahoning Valley to embrace a bold new approach for addressing this fundamental urban problem. A new approach must be comprehensive, strategic, ongoing, focused, collaborative and provide a financial return to the region. By developing a comprehensive organizing and policy strategy to address vacant properties, neighborhoods and communities can reinvent themselves by effectively reutilizing vacant properties.

Voter Engagement

In the summer and fall of 2008, the MVOC and its partners developed one of the largest nonpartisan GOTV efforts in the state of Ohio focusing their work in six cities Cincinnati, Canton, Youngstown, Warren, and Cleveland and Toledo. In total, more than seventy paid staff and one hundred and fifty volunteers made more than 37,078 voter contacts including knocking on 5,908 doors, signing up 8,531 voters at local churches, and making 59,419 phone calls in the 72 hours before the election.

MVOC sees electoral politics as a key piece of a long term strategy for social change. We subscribe to Wellstone Action’s basic model as Jeff Blodgett describes, "We subscribe to a model of successful social change that has three fronts—community organizing, electoral politics, and progressive public policy. All three components are necessary for lasting political change to happen. The process of campaigning, of running for elected office, is but one side of that triangle, but it is crucial."

Health Care

We are engage in health care reform because it is not only a social justice issue (for those who have no coverage) but it is economic issue putting undo pressure on local businesses and corporations that are vital to the Valley’s economy. Health care reform is a fundamental to job creation and more sustainable neighborhoods.

Our current health care system in America is not affordable for families, businesses or government. We need an American solution to secure our families’ health and a healthy economy. All of us, individuals, employers and government have a shared responsibility to realize comprehensive reforms in our health care system.

Neighborhood Issues

The Idora Neighborhood is located on the southwest side of the Youngstown and has seen serious disinvestment over the past thirty years and is now almost devoid of commercial activity. This area of the city is a food desert (no full service grocery stores) and has an overabundance of corner convenience stores. The corner stores are breeding grounds for the criminal activity that is rampant throughout the southwest side.

Residents voiced serious concern over the condition and effects of the stores and established a neighborhood association. In March 2008, the Mahoning Valley Organizing Collaborative began working with the group (Idora Neighborhood Association) to increase the capacity and membership of the organization. Today, the Idora Neighborhood Association (INA) is one of Youngstown’s premier civic groups with a growing membership of more than 225 residents on the city’s southwest side.

Community-Labor Partnerships

Fundamental to stable neighborhoods are living wage jobs and economic opportunities for residents in the Valley. MVOC sees community labor partnerships as a key piece of its work. In September 2008, SEIU 1199 and MVOC held a joint public meeting with new Forum Health CEO Walter Pishkur to discuss the future of Forum Health, a fair contract for the 1,100 members at the hospital system, and for additional community representation on the Forum Board.