“If the neighborhood is to a point where our intervention is not going to alter the outcome, we may not be able to operate there,” said Mike Grauwelman, executive director of the Land Bank, which was established in 2012 to deal with blight countywide.
RELATED: The deaths of five women in Dayton linked by drugs, possible foul play
Two such neighborhoods — Santa Clara and North Riverdale — are where the bodies of four Dayton women were found within blocks of each other between June and January in yards or alleyways of Hudson, Norman and Ernst avenues. A fifth woman was found shot to death a mile south on Superior Avenue.
Three of the deaths were homicides, one woman showed signs of strangulation but was too decomposed to determine a cause of death and the most recent case was an overdose.
Neighbors say that the huge number of vacant homes in those neighborhoods make it less likely for witnesses to see a killing or a body being dumped. They are also magnets for drug activity and prostitution.
On the four streets where the five bodies were found, 94 vacant residential structures are tax-delinquent and presumed abandoned, according to this newspaper’s analysis of data complied by Montgomery County Auditor Karl Keith.
“It’s just so vacant and blighted it looks as if nobody lives there or cares,” said neighborhood activist Lynn LaMance of Dayton. “The people who live here do care. It’s just a perception.”
City of Dayton Neighborhood Initiative Program (NIP) demolitions 2012 to February 2018
Note: Additional demolitions not part of the NIP are not listed
Source: City of Dayton
‘There’s really not a lot of people around here’
LaMance and Victoria McNeal, president of the Riverdale Neighborhood Association, patrol the alleys of streets jutting off North Main Street, picking up trash, calling the city about vacant buildings that need to be boarded up, painting over graffiti and also contacting absentee owners about cleaning up their properties.
Twice during the reporting of this story someone tore open the boarded door of the trash-filled garage at 22 W. Hudson Avenue where homicide victim Krystal Garcia’s body was found Sept. 25.
Credit: Lynn Hulsey
Credit: Lynn Hulsey
“They just go rip the boards off and nobody sees anything because there’s really not a lot of people around here,” said McNeal, who, with LaMance, alerted the city that the boards were off, only to find them removed again. “We like it when the police sit on the street. It makes us feel safe. But once they leave (drug dealers and prostitutes) go back to what they normally do.”
Dayton Police Chief Richard Biehl said there is a clear correlation between vacant structures and crime, particularly drug activity.
“I would say that the North Main corridor has been a location of challenge in terms of public safety,” said Biehl. “There has been a pattern of violent crime over time there.”
Drug and prostitution arrests skyrocketed along the North Main Street corridor, in the stretch of neighborhoods from Neal Avenue to Redder Avenue, according to data compiled by Dayton Police Department. Drug arrests increased 63 percent to 182 in 2017 from 112 in 2016 and prostitution arrests rose 110 percent t0 21 from 10.
RELATED: Ohio may crack down on prostitution to fight opioid crisis
Part one violent crimes — a category that includes murder, non-negligent manslaughter forcible rape, armed robbery, unarmed robbery and aggravated assault — declined along the corridor by 22 percent to 91 in 2017 from 116 in 2016, the data show.
Citywide, Dayton had a 16 percent decline during that period in part one violent crimes.
“So we’ve had some huge declines in violent crime and gun crime. But with that much said, any level of that crime is really intolerable,” Biehl said. “So we continue to work at that and try to drive those trends down.”
‘It will not be corrected overnight’
Residents want the city to do more to stop the crime and to tear down more vacant houses and garages. But some residents, like Gloria White, president of the Santa Clara Neighborhood Association, also understand that the city’s money is limited.
“There is no answer in a certain way, unless we’re going to hit the great big lotto,” White said. “It’s discouraging to me that I have an empty house sitting next to me. We’ll never get our money back for our homes.”
RELATED: Two drug deaths from one family. Says mom: ‘It was like living in hell’
Some of the vacant properties on Ernst, Hudson, Norman and Superior avenues carry back tax bills that come close or even exceed what the houses are worth. Many of the homes are also owned by limited liability companies, making it more difficult to hold individuals responsible for the tax bills. Any potential buyer would face a large tax liability, and expensive repair costs. McNeal said many times homes have also been stripped of copper and whatever else thieves can sell.
Vacant, tax-delinquent abandoned structures on streets where five women's bodies were found since June 2017
| Street | Number abandoned | Total delinquency | Total assessed value of house |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ernst Ave. | 5 | $79,479 | $146,860 |
| Hudson Ave. | 33 | $512,791 | $928,490 |
| Norman Ave. | 37 | $639,958 | $1,034,800 |
| Superior Ave. | 19 | $254,192 | $344,580 |
| TOTALS | 94 | $1,486,419 | $2,454,730 |
Note: Residential properties with structures that have been certified tax delinquent for two or more years and have assessments that are indicators of abandonment like water, weeds and mowing . Excludes abandoned land.
Source: Montgomery County Auditor
No one even applied for a loan to buy a home in the census tract that includes the Santa Clara neighborhood in 2016, according to the most recent available Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data. Across North Main Street in the census tract that includes the North Riverdale neighborhood, there were only seven loan applications, three of which were approved. Together those census tracts were home to 6,318 people in 2016.
Dayton City Manager Shelly Dickstein said the section of Dayton that includes these two neighborhoods is one of the worst in the city, in part because it is so densely residential and was so badly hurt by home foreclosures.
“Clearly and unfortunately this neighborhood was probably a national leader in the foreclosure crisis,” Dickstein said.
She said the city has limited resources and must use them in neighborhoods across Dayton, a city that once housed 260,000 people and now has 140,000.
Grauwelman said that declining population is a challenge because it brings in less revenue even as the city’s footprint and need for municipal services remains unchanged.
“We’ve got to reduce inventory,” he said. “This didn’t happen overnight and it will not be corrected overnight.”
‘Chasing your tail’
Dayton has demolished 839 structures — 144 of them in the North Main area — since 2012 at a cost of $13.8 million, using funding available through the Neighborhood Initiative Program (NIP), part of the post-recession-era federal stimulus effort. But none of them were in Santa Clara and just 27 were in North Riverdale.
RELATED: Many owners of abandoned homes escape responsibility
The city spent another $13.2 million in Community Development Block Grant and General Fund money to tear down other structures in Dayton, mostly fire-damaged or commercial structures. The city could not provide a tally of how many of them were in Santa Clara or North Riverdale.
In total, the city has spent $27 million demolishing structures since 2012, including $4 million for properties in neighborhoods along North Main Street.
“Sometimes you feel like you are chasing your tail,” Dickstein acknowledged.
The average cost of a single demolition costs $16,000, meaning it would cost $66.5 million to demolish all 4,159 structures in the city’s vacant property land management program.
“It is a collective effort,” Dickstein said. “The city cannot come in as the sole investor, driver of this plan, because we won’t have enough resources.”
Five women found dead since June in North Main Street area of Dayton
Kathleen Driscoll, 31, Dayton.
Found: Jan. 12, 2018 in vacant lot at 39 Ernst Ave., Dayton
The cause of death: pending.
Deanna Prendergast, 39, Kettering
Found: Sept. 15, 2017 in back yard of vacant duplex at 15-17 E. Hudson Ave., Dayton
The cause of death: undetermined.
Krystal Garcia, 30, Dayton
Found: Sept. 25, 2017 in back yard of vacant house at 22 W. Hudson Ave., Dayton.
The cause of death: homicide.
Amanda Fella, 34, Miamisburg
Found: July 27, 2017 in the alley beside an apartment building at 316 Superior Ave., Dayton.
The cause of death: homicide
Jasmine Wadsworth, 39, Huber Heights
Found: June 21, 2017 in alley behind vacant house at 24 W. Norman Ave., Dayton.
The cause of death: homicide.
THE STORY SO FAR
PREVIOUSLY: The bodies of five women — three declared homicides — have been found in neighborhoods near North Main Street in Dayton since June. All are unsolved but authorities say all five had drugs in their bodies and that their deaths may be tied to the drug trafficking and prostitution that is rampant in that area. The mother of one dead woman said she has now lost two daughters to drugs.
WHAT'S NEW: The neighborhoods are filled with vacant, dilapidated houses and trash-strewn alleys that make recovery a daunting task. Drug dealing and prostitution are major problems, and demolition costs are such that vacant structures sit for a long time, inviting more crime.
WHAT'S NEXT: The deaths remain under investigation by Dayton Police and drug raids are being conducted by the Montgomery County RANGE drug task force. City officials are searching for ways to revitalize those neighborhoods but concede there is not enough money to fix all of the city's dilapidated neighborhoods and hope that private sector partners will come forward.
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