The Gary Housing Authority plans to demolish 252 vacant housing units in Delaney West and Concord Village developments with a $3.2 million federal award announced Friday.
GHA executive director Julian Marsh said the demolition could begin in three to four months. The money was provided by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
The GHA has targeted the sites as part of its plan to knock down about 450 units. Not only has Gary's population declined, but the public housing philosophy has shifted away from housing impoverished people in large housing clusters.
GHA deputy executive director Jillian Baldwin said 227 of the Delaney town homes at 21st Avenue and Pierce Street, will be demolished. At Concord Village, 5001 W. 19th Ave., an apartment building containing 27 units will be demolished, she said.
HUD Midwest Regional Administrator Joseph Galvin, who announced the award at Gary's City Hall, said it became difficult for the GHA to prevent vandalism and illegal trespassing in the housing developments. "The grant will provide the Gary Housing Authority a new resource to provide community safety," he said.
Residents in single-family homes on Pierce Street across from Delaney worried about the vacant town homes becoming attractive nuisances, attracting illegal activity and crime. Two men were gunned down in Delaney West in recent years.
The Delaney complex is now encircled by a tall cyclone fence, keeping intruders out.
Once the homes are demolished, it's likely the area will be left as green space as the GHA continues on a direction of scattered site housing, said Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson.
Federal housing officials now mandate that new projects must avoid high-rises and large clusters of units. During the 1960s, such complexes, like Delaney, were built quickly in response to a housing shortage.
Now, however, federal officials say the scattered site housing such as Duneland Village in Miller, which opened in 2006 and the Horace Mann apartments, offer better options for poor tenants and they help reduce crime.
Freeman-Wilson credited Marsh with securing the grant.
"I know this will allow us to direct development around Delaney and Concord," she said.
This latest demolition project continues the city's course of knocking down vacant housing across the city. Freeman-Wilson said the city has already spent about $4 million of an $11 million federal grant to demolish between 700 and 1,000 houses. "We believe another 4,000 are worthy of demolition – commercial and residential," she said.
The Redevelopment Commission awarded contracts for the demolition of 108 homes on Wednesday, she said.
Freeman-Wilson said the city could save up to one-third the cost of disposing construction debris from the demolitions if it had a construction/demolition landfill site in the city. A bid to establish a site failed in the General Assembly this year, after passing the House. Freeman-Wilson said it's likely another bill could surface next year.
The GHA's last large-scale demolition was in 2010 when 316 units in 103 buildings at Ivanhoe Gardens, 3200 W. 11th Ave., came down with federal stimulus money.