In one critical area of the city of Youngstown’s identity, things certainly will be looking up come 2025.

After decades of slow but steady work to tear down aging, dilapidated, blighted and public health-threatening properties in every quadrant of the city, efforts will begin in earnest early in the year to build up the city’s housing stock.

Since 2007, an eye-popping 6,939 vacant houses have been demolished in Youngstown with 424 homes taken down this year. According to Ian Beniston, executive director of the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp., “We’ve all but eliminated housing in need of demolition.”

A major assistant in that remarkable progress has been the Mahoning County Land Bank, which acquired millions of dollars in grant funds to expedite the process in land clearing in recent years.

“The infusion of money from the state to the land bank has been instrumental in taking those properties down. In terms of demolition for Youngstown, it’s much more manageable now. It’s not thousands, it’s a couple of hundred,” said Debora Flora, executive director of the land bank.

The benefits of the power of the wrecking ball have been many. Fewer abandoned homes have cut down public blight, health hazards and has reduced the city’s once notoriously high arson rate.

Most importantly, however, the work has cleared a path for a boom in building new and affordable housing throughout the city, the likes of which the city has not witnessed in many decades.

Toward that hoped-for end, the city has wisely planned a multi-pronged public-private strategy for rebuilding blocks and blocks of now vacant land.

In it, the YNDC will play a leading role. It’s already off to a terrific start. The agency has built 12 new homes in the city, including three on Bernard Street on the city’s South Side. It broke ground last month on six new single-family dwellings on Mineral Springs Avenue and has at least 35 additional new housing units it will build in the city in the new year, including 16 from a second $5 million Welcome Home Ohio grant obtained by the land bank.

When one considers that an average of only one single-family home has been built yearly in the city over the past 15 years, the work on some four-dozen or more homes in one year represents spectacular progress indeed.

Teamwork has been crucial toward that success and will remain so in the revitalization of city neighborhoods. In addition to the assistance from the land bank, state government housing programs such as Welcome Home Ohio and federal dollars from the American Rescue Plan, private entities have also become critical components.

Huntington Bank has signed on to provide down payment assistance of up to $18,000 for qualified program buyers, and 717 Credit Union will administer three programs involving construction, low-interest loans and a revolving loan fund for landlords.

John Demmler, 717’s president and CEO, said the Youngstown Affordable Loan Program will create up to $35 million worth of discounted mortgage financing, making payments on home loans for a $100,000 house about $500 per month. Such low rates are bound to make the once out-of-reach dream of home ownership a reality for many.

That intense and detailed planning and strong partnerships bring strong potential for the Youngstown housing program to meet or beat its lofty objectives. It also should serve as a viable model for other communities in the Mahoning Valley.

Other cities and townships have laid the groundwork for success. Campbell and Struthers, for example, have made great headway in clearing neighborhoods of blighted properties.

In Trumbull County, success under the leadership of the Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership and the Trumbull County Land Bank has been noteworthy as well. According to the TNP by the end of last year, it oversaw demolition of 1,318 properties, sold about 1,400 previously vacant properties and recorded $425,900 in property sales. In partnership with the Trumbull land bank, it also is overseeing construction of new housing on the former Devon School property in Warren.

Clearly, momentum is building to stabilize and increase the value of homes and properties in urban cores throughout the Valley. The fringe benefits of such progress include repopulating the region with stable, long-term residents. That comes at a propitious time as the Youngstown-Warren Regional Chamber is leading the charge to grow the population to better fill an increasing number of job opportunities taking root or soon to take root in the Valley.

The key to success in 2025 will be to build, build, build that momentum by carrying the level of housing construction to levels unmatched in our region since the post-World War II era.