Group Ready to Attack Housing and Other Issues in Warren

Community members meet on the north side of Warren

At 6:00pm on January 25th at Higher First United Methodist Church at 309 North Park Avenue, the Mahoning Valley Organizing Collaborative will be convening city officials, faith-based and neighborhood leaders, and other interested parties to address several pressing issues within our communities in Warren. The meeting is a result of an extensive organizing campaign ongoing on the North Side of Warren, primarily the area north of downtown. Several neighborhood leaders have emerged out of clean-up efforts, door-to-door canvassing, and a recent meeting with Mayor O’Brien at a North Side Fall Potluck celebration. The leadership has tentatively named the effort “North Side Neighborhood Action.”

“This isn’t about having neighborhood meetings with no action,” says Sharon Cook, who has spent several months building organization in her neighborhood. “We know what our problems are and we’re going to do something about it. We’re seeing if we can get some help with them.” The problems that she’s talking about are strikingly evident: vacant homes populate the neighborhood and many are unsecured, creating a huge hazard for neighborhood residents. Pockets of these vacant homes create high crime areas, since there are no neighbors around to keep an eye out on the properties.

MVOC and NSNA have been working to acquire the materials to secure upwards of 30 homes in the immediate area and hope to secure commitments from city officials and representatives of the Warren Police Department to join neighborhood activists in a broad-based collaboration to board up the homes. The meeting will also address a local corner store, USA Gas Mart on North Park, and ask the owner to sign a community-corner store agreement. The agreement sets standards that the business is expected to adhere to by the community, including cleaning trash from outside the store and updating its deteriorating façade, and continue to work closely with active neighbors to discourage loitering, drug distribution, and prostitution around the gas station. Rodney Hathhorn lives in the neighborhood and also manages Garden Resources of Warren (GROW), a nonprofit organization that converts vacant properties into productive garden space. He says of the effort, “we need active community involvement from groups and individuals to turn this around. There comes a point where we all need to take a look at what is going on and do something about it.”

NSNA, GROW, and MVOC wish to do this: unite those with a common interest to fix the problems in the neighborhood and the city. They are also reaching out to other neighborhood groups, churches, and other interested parties with the understanding that these types of issues are not exclusive to the North Side; Cook says, “our neighborhood’s problems are going on all over the city. I hope that everyone is involved in this and we’ll take our success elsewhere. All it takes is neighbors talking and getting active.” Feel free to contact Adam at the Mahoning Valley Organizing Collaborative offices at 330-743-1196 with questions or to get involved.

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