Urban Ghost Town

Urban ghost town
The emptiest neighborhood in the United States sits just south of Westland Mall. . . .
Tuesday, May 5, 2009 3:13 AM
By Mark Ferenchik
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH


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The area, anchored by the desolate Wingate Villages apartment complex, leads the nation in having the most vacant housing units in areas with at least 1,000 homes.

For the first quarter of the year, nearly 70 percent of the houses and apartments were vacant, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal data.

Of Ohio's major metropolitan areas, Columbus usually is considered the most stable because the city and its suburbs continue to grow.

But there are holes. Many Columbus neighborhoods, racked by poverty, foreclosures, crime and blight, continue to empty. There are more than 5,300 vacant homes citywide, according to the most-recent numbers.

At Wingate Village, only one in five units -- 352 of 1,712 apartments -- is occupied. And that's up from last year's 12 percent occupancy rate, said Bert Hyman, a project manager for property owner Matrix Realty.

The Associated Press analyzed data from more than 65,000 neighborhoods, or census tracts, nationwide, including 2,963 in Ohio.

Franklin County has 39 census tracts in which at least 10 percent of the housing units are vacant according to first-quarter figures from 2009.

Most are concentrated in the central city, although some spread north to Morse Road and beyond, where there are vacant apartments.

None of the adjacent counties -- Delaware, Fairfield, Licking, Madison, Pickaway and Union -- had census tracts with double-digit vacancy rates in the first quarter of 2009.

Although much attention has been focused recently on foreclosures in middle-class neighborhoods, the Associated Press analysis, based on data collected by the U.S. Postal Service and the Housing and Urban Development Department, shows the emptiest neighborhoods are clustered in places hit hard during the recession of the 1980s -- cities such as Flint, Mich.; Buffalo, N.Y.; Indianapolis; and Columbus.

That doesn't surprise Don Haurin, professor of economics, finance and public policy at Ohio State University.

"There are easily two Columbuses. One is the core area, and it does have many of the problems other Rust Belt areas have," Haurin said.

The other, Haurin said, is the city's newer suburban area that has expanded the city to about 227 square miles.

"If that annexation hadn't occurred, we'd be losing population like other Rust Belt cities," he said.

At the same time, Haurin said smaller census tracts, such as those in the central city, can be skewed by a single, dominant apartment complex. That's where the 40-year-old Wingate Villages fits in.

The 135 apartment buildings actually sit inside Franklin Township, but reflect the slide of some of the city's older areas. Across from the complex on Georgesville Road is the idled Delphi plant. Westland Mall is mostly empty.

For years, the complex was plagued by homicides, robberies and other crimes. An arson fire there in 2004 killed 10 people. In the meantime, owners kicked out dozens of bad tenants and tried to lure new ones with special rates.

Marcus King, 30, moved in about a year ago. He drives a forklift at a nearby Big Lots warehouse and finds the complex safe. When he deals with neighbors, it's to "borrow some sugar," he said.

Hyman said Matrix has rented out 200 units in the past six months. He said it has spent $1.2 million to renovate the aging units, obtaining $4 million in financing to fix them up.

It's going to take a lot more than special rates to attract new life to some cities. That's why federal lawmakers have designated nearly $6 billion during the past year for local governments to buy foreclosed and abandoned homes to rehab or demolish.

The Associated Press analysis, however, shows the money, at most, will make a modest dent in the problem. As of March 31, there were about 4 million homes that have been empty for 90 days -- a slight increase over last year's figures and about 3 percent of all U.S. homes.

Columbus received $22.8 million. The city is spending $84,345 on a study to determine where the money should go.

Matrix had spoken with the Horn of Africa Community Center, a social-service group for Somali immigrants, about relocating families while offering on-site help for Somalis, who were interested in an ownership stake in the property.

But that idea fell through. Horn of Africa President Mussa Farah said his community did not have enough money to buy property.

Still, the Somali community is raising money to build a mosque at the northwest corner of Sullivant Avenue and Industrial Mile Drive in Prairie Township, next to Wingate Villages.

Farah said that could attract hundreds of Somali families to Wingate Villages, building a new community.

And then, that area might lose its distinction as the most vacant.

mferenchik@dispatch.com

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2009/05/05/VACANTHOODS.ART_ART_05-05-09_A1_RMDOR6K.html?sid=101

Constructed Situations

Preliminary Problems in Constructing a Situation
http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/display_printable/313

"We must thus envisage a sort of situationist-oriented psychoanalysis in which, in contrast to the goals pursued by the various currents stemming from Freudianism, each of the participants in this adventure would discover desires for specific ambiances in order to fulfill them. Each person must seek what he loves, what attracts him. (And here again, in contrast to certain endeavors of modern writing — Leiris, for example — what is important to us is neither our individual psychological structures nor the explanation of their formation, but their possible application in the construction of situations.) Through this method one can tabulate elements out of which situations can be constructed, along with projects to dynamize these elements."


Report on the Construction of Situations and on the International Situationist Tendency’s Conditions of Organization and Action
http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/report.htm

"A revolutionary action within culture must aim to enlarge life, not merely to express or explain it. It must attack misery on every front. Revolution is not limited to determining the level of industrial production, or even to determining who is to be the master of such production. It must abolish not only the exploitation of humanity, but also the passions, compensations and habits which that exploitation has engendered. We have to define new desires in relation to present possibilities. In the thick of the battle between the present society and the forces that are going to destroy it, we have to find the first elements of a more advanced construction of the environment and new conditions of behavior — both as experiences in themselves and as material for propaganda. Everything else belongs to the past, and serves it."