The City of Salem has received a $190,000 Illinois Department of Housing grant to be used to pay the cost of tearing down homes that are beyond repair. Public Works Director Annette Sola made the announcement at Monday’s city council meeting.
She hopes all of the estimated 50 homes in that condition can be torn down by city crews with state reimbursement under the program.
“The grant application process was fairly simple, but it was a matter of having houses ready to tear down. We have enough houses now that we qualified. We are just excited to get started. The group we have ready, we anticipate to have all those down probably by mid-November.”
Code Enforcement Officer Dave Lusch detailed the number of derelict homes he is dealing with.
“There’s 8 or 9 that are signed off on. I’ve got 3 that are still waiting through the court system right now so we have approximately 10. We have 20 I can do reports on and get submitted as soon as we got approval.”
Lusch says once the city decides to take action, it takes four to six months to get through the court proceedings and contact everyone with interest in the dilapidated property.
Sola hopes the city can keep up with the problem going forward.
“The nice thing about this is this will give us the ability to get ahead of it. So I think if we can tear the 50 down with what we’ve been given, that will allow us to budget the money each year so instead of chasing the problem we would be in front of it. And that would be a nice position to be in.”
Sola expects public works crews to complete most of the work to keep costs down so more homes can be demolished. She reports a lien will be placed against the property, but the city will not seek to take ownership. Sola hopes the property owners will be interested in selling the vacant lots to allow for new home construction.
Lusch feels the demolition work will improve the value of other homes in the neighborhood while also eliminating health and safety hazards.
The South Central Illinois Regional Planning Commission helped the city prepare the grant application.
