In the 30’s Youngstown in the Rust Belt used to brand itself as the City of Homes – a city where the worker was king in his castle. But that became history with foreclosure stalking the town – it being the first mortgage crisis of modern times. Three decades later some of the houses continue to stand with boarded windows staring with sightless eyes on to the streets of Youngstown.

Other towns picked up speed to catch up with the times but Youngstown remained behind as an example showing how hard it is to get back on rails once having fallen out of it. The rate of its vacant buildings is 20 times more than the national average according to John D. Bralich researcher at Center for Urban and Regional Studies (Youngstown State University).

In spite of the city putting in the best efforts to tackle the problem of old and new foreclosed units the problem remains intractable. Handfuls of remedies have been taken by the municipality to increase control but without much tangible results. Community organizer Phil Kidd aptly described it as “Hurricane Katrina over 30 years!”

The troubles of Youngstown began when the steel mills shut down in the 70s. It brought down the population of the city by 60% counting to 72,000 covering many decades. Vacant buildings were a curse and caused the depression of properties in general. For many years the officials had hoped that the problems would automatically vanish. They pinned their hopes to a blimp plant and sports car manufacturing unit (Avanti) among couple of others. None of these took off partly because of corruption akin to feudal days.

Previously the people tackled the problem of abandoned houses by setting fire to them; it became a regular practice in the 80s. The business of the mob was to yank off door knobs and mantelpieces made of mahogany. The process was given a name – “scarfing” said the co-director of Center for Working-Class Studies, Sherry Linkon.

In 2000 Jay Williams, formerly a dynamic banker of the Federal Reserve became the director the community development of the city; five years later he became the mayor. He chalked out a blueprint for the development of Youngstown in 2010. The plan was to shrink it – it was a bold step that none had dared to talk about in the past.