This problem is not unique to Youngstown.

The United Kingdom has been working to improve their system for over fifty years and it would be helpful to compare and contrast our problems with the problems in the UK.

Until U.S. taxpayers bite-the-bullet and decide to fund massive housing projects for our most vulnerable citizens it would also be helpful if all of us would work with local attorneys to decide how we and members of our own families are going to be cared should we become unable to care for ourselves or members of our families.

Until we actually get around to creating housing opportunities we need to study how the system in the United Kingdom and other places actually works on a day-to-day basis and bring those practices here so we can improve our own disjointed and dysfunctional system.

I doubt ‘awareness’ journalism without proposed solutions is going to help as … ‘awareness’ articles come across as trying to convince people that the ‘awareness’ beatings will stop when the morale improves.

Actually and in the real world people become aware and …don’t care.

Proposed solutions please.
::
GP

Perhaps an audit needs to be conducted of the emergency response systems for the Mahoning Valley and upgrades to the system made if necessary.

A release of hazardous materials on any of the highways due to a truck accident could require a rapid response via that telephone system so that residents will know to leave their homes or shelter-in-place.

Also, rather than call 911 to complain, wouldn’t it be a better idea to call some telephone number other than 911?

Routine audits of essential system sure keeps the anxiety levels down in the neighborhoods.
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GP

I’m not sure ‘crime’ is so much the problem, Sybil, as it is appearance. The place looks totally decrepit, but if it made it through the past three decades downtown I guess we shouldn’t expect it to look glossy. The place is an embarrassment to the city, and the entire “Valley.” Looking at the new Akron Transit Center, and Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station should make us strive especially for something greater. The stimulus money should have been spent on new (state-of-the-art) shelters for at least! Fifth Ave. and Market St.

There is also no Master Line that runs from Downtown Warren-Niles (422), through Girard, down MLK, to Federal Street, through downtown; then East up Himrod/Wilson, to Lowellville and/or Downtown Struthers, then back to Federal Terminal (Downtown).

A similar North-South (YNG) Belmont-Market Line that goes to the barely-alive airport is also necessary to connect the mall and 224 to the North (Churchill), with new, shelters in Liberty and on Lower-Belmont: hospitals, pool, Gypsy, etc. There currently are none.

The saddest display of waste and idiocracy is when they razor-fenced-in a blacktop space where the Rescue Mission was, on Mahoning, next to the B&O. This is PRIME commercial/public land. In the Artists’ Commons. Sickening.

- Kris