Shelbyville eliminating blight and building new homes for less fortunate
SHELBYVILLE, Ind (WISH) — The city of Shelbyville is eliminating blight, one run down house at a time.
The city will begin demolishing homes in a couple weeks, but the work won’t stop there. Shelbyville is teaming up with Habitat for Humanity. The organization will either use the properties as open space or rebuild single-family homes for the less fortunate. Each lot will vary.
On Elm Street, the neighborhood is ideal. It’s a place where people take pride in their homes, lawns are perfectly groomed and spring flowers are already in bloom.
“You couldn’t ask for a better place to live than Shelbyville,” said Edie Scott. Scott lives in Shelbyville and works right across the street from where one home will be demolished.
“When I look at the house, it’d be better if it was torn down,” she said.
Scott will get her wish. It’s one of 13 homes the city will demolish in the Blight Elimination Program. The homes are sold to the city from homeowners, who receive $10,000 or less for their property. The uninhabitable homes aren’t concentrated to just one neighborhood.
“In Shelbyville’s case, it’s spotty. You look around the neighborhood from that standpoint. The houses that have been acquired, two of them have been burned previously. Others were in very bad shape,” said Shelbyville Building and Planning Director Dan Bird.
The idea behind the program is to rid communities of unsafe houses and unkempt lawns that are driving property values down.
“The property values with a house in this particular situation, it benefits the community,” said Bird.
Bird says the homes are also a target for criminal activity, saying that some vandalism has occurred.
It’s a problem neighbors have noticed too. They reported a lot of traffic in and out of the run down home on Elm Street.
“Kids go in there and smoke and not put out their cigarette and stuff, and there could be rats or snakes,” said Scott.
But not for long. According to Bird, demolition on the first house will take place in less than two weeks. The project cost around $306,000. According to Bird, the state picks up 90 percent of the bill and Shelbyville covers the rest.