The current mayor's race has brought out talk about demolitions by the candidates but few new ideas or thoughts about how to reverse the deterioration of the city's housing stock. This is a frustrating situation for the voter who wants to hear some realistic debate about how to improve the city, rather than more of the same about patchwork damage control which is all demolitions can hope to accomplish.
Maybe it would help if the candidates looked at the data and understood the magnitude of how many demolitions it would take to improve the city. Here are some numbers provided by Richland County Regional Planning about the condition of housing. Census tracts 1 through 8 in Mansfield represent the core of the city and the most deteriorated areas. [here's a link to a map of census tracts http://www.rcrpc.org/documents/mfdtrt.pdf] Within those 8 tracts there are 88 houses rated UNSOUND, 97 houses rated VERY POOR MINUS, and a total of 3251 houses rated POOR or lower [ Poor, Poor Minus, Very Poor, Very Poor Minus, & Unsound]. That's 46% of the housing stock in those 8 tracts.
When you look at these numbers and try to figure which end of this problem to put the most effort and money into, I think it's obvious that a program of stepped up demolitions is not the answer. Yes, code enforcement needs to be emphasized and the demolition process continued, but let's hear about some more positive ideas for improving the salvageable properties and encouraging people to reinvest in the older neighborhoods.
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