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Yahoo
10-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
City of Erie declares five new blighted properties as work continues
The City of Erie Blighted Property Committee has been working to fix unsafe and unappealing properties across the city, but the job isn't done quite yet. The Blighted Property Committee met again Wednesday, declaring five more new properties as blighted. Erie High students start their on tiny homes for people in need The City of Erie Blighted Property Committee has been around for over 30 years, and since then, it's declared hundreds of properties as blighted across the city. On Wednesday the committee met once again to rescind blights placed on five properties. 'Two of those were rehabilitation and renovation by the redevelopment authority and Erie Land Bank, properties that were conveyed to a developer for rehabilitation, and they completed those renovations and as part of that process, we've issued a certificate of completion and also the BPRC today rescinded the blight,' said Aaron Snippert, executive director of the City of Erie Redevelopment Authority. Snippert said the designation on the other three properties was rescinded after being demolished. Jersey Mike's presents Shriner's Erie with annual donation The work is never done for the blighted property committee. After rescinding five properties around the City of Erie, they're adding five new ones to their list to work on, including one on German Street. 'Those five properties that were declared blighted, they'll be posted with a notice of blight on the property. We'll file a declaration of blight at the courthouse and then we'll look to try to see if the property owner will be responsive to that notice of blight,' Snippert said. Snippert said property owners will have 30 days to respond to the notice, and if they don't respond, then city code enforcement or the Erie Land Bank will look into the property to see if it's worth acquiring down the road. He said many of those property owners are out-of-town companies and investors who buy properties at low value in erie and leave them unattended. Erie Regional Airport Authority hosting Global Entry event And if you would like to report a property to be blighted in your neighborhood, Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
What's being done to combat blighted properties in City of Erie?
There are currently 276 addresses on the City of Erie's blighted property list. And for 85% of those properties, city officials said there's no opportunity for reuse of the structure standing there, and demolition is the only option. 'We have people who are responsible each for a section of the city. Anytime we get a complaint about a problem in a neighborhood, they go and look at it and if they see the house is in disrepair, they'll declare that and will start a process where it has to be either fixed up or torn down,' said City of Erie Mayor Joe Schember. On average, it takes about a year and a half for the city to get to some of these properties and take action on them. However, they do have a scoring system of sorts that prioritizes them based on situational conditions. 16th annual Knockout Homelessness fundraising event takes place Tuesday 'If it's a stable block of housing and there's one blight of property in it, that gets a higher score than potentially where we're trying to get an assemblage of properties. Maybe we've had a lot of interventions in that area in the last two or three years so we're going to continue that level of intervention to help raise that neighborhood up,' said Aaron Snippert, executive director of the Redevelopment Authority of the City of Erie. While the property may be declared blighted, they don't immediately assume ownership. 'The common misconception is when we blight a property that it's instantly the redevelopment authorities and it's not. We want to work with that property owner to rehabilitate that property,' said Snippert. 'We're working with them, we're managing them, we're keeping up to date with them and making sure that they're continuously moving forward to improve those properties.' About 100 of the 276 on the blight list fall under some level of intervention by the current owner. Local shelters provide warmth as homeless population battles bitter cold temps. Once either remediation or demolition is finished, it not only becomes a possible source of tax revenue for the city again, but it could enhance the value of neighboring properties. And prompts owners to invest. 'We have this investment of money from Erie Land Bank and through the City of Erie and the American Rescue Plan to mitigate blight with the redevelopment authority and so we're working to acquire those properties and ultimately try to improve neighborhoods and improve property values associated with that,' said Snippert. As of Wednesday, February 16, there are currently 16 addresses on the blighted property list right now that are scheduled for demolition. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
