Christine Long reports:
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine was in Toledo on Thursday watching as demolition crews tore down two vacant homes.
DeWine is highlighting the demolition grant program and how it is getting rid of hundreds of abandoned, foreclosed homes across the city in an effort to revitalize neighborhoods.
The two homes were located next door to each other on Brewster Street off of Hawley.
The goal of the demolition grant program is to tear down 900 of the worst homes in Toledo by the end of 2013.
On the corner of Brewster and Wellington wrecking crews tore down two vacant homes Thursday morning in one hour.
They are two of dozens of abandoned, boarded-up homes in the neighborhood.
"There's a lot of fires, like every day there's a fire," says Kimberly Baker, who lives across the street with her four month old baby. "It has people going in and out of them or rodents even investing the neighborhood, things like that."
Ken Hayes with the City of Toledo Streets Department is running the heavy equipment. He says he feels like he's making a difference demolishing six homes a day.
"It's definitely fun running the machine and you feel good because you're getting rid of bad houses that become problems, you know gangs and violence, and most of all fires," says Hayes.
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine was in town to mark the 340th vacant home that has been torn down in Toledo since last August with the help of millions in demolition grant money. The funds come from the national mortgage settlement reached in 2012.
"Imagine if you lived in this neighborhood and had to put up with living by a house like this," says DeWine. "These people are the true victims of the mortgage crisis."
Lucas County Treasurer Wade Kapszukiewicz says the goal is to demolish 900 by the end of the year.
"We're on pace to actually do three times what was already the record amount of demolitions in our community," says Kapszukiewicz.
"We want our kids to feel safe. We want our neighborhoods to feel safe," says Toledo Mayor Mike Bell.
"900 houses is houses that our officers do not need to get out of the car, walk through, see if they're being used as a shooting gallery, as they say in the streets," says Lucas County Sheriff John Tharp.
With these two torn down today, Baker says her neighborhood is now a little bit safer.
"It's a lot better than seeing them just sitting there," says Baker. "No one is going to buy them. The market is bad. It's better than nothing."
There are more than 21,000 vacant properties reported in Toledo.
One year ago, the DeWine announced Lucas County was getting $3.6 million to tear down abandoned, foreclosed homes.
Adding local matching money to the equation, there is more than $6 million which needs to be used for this project by the end of the year.
