Of the more than 15,000 properties in Greensburg, Latrobe and Monessen, 516 – nearly 3.5% – are damaged, according to an inventory carried out by county officials.

The data is the result of a planning partnership between each city and the County of Westmoreland to provide a detailed overview of the individual properties within each jurisdiction.

“It’s a problem that almost all communities face in one way or another,” said Daniel Carpenter, deputy deputy director of the county’s planning and development department. “It’s an approach, it’s a way for us to support our communities in the face of the problem. In many cases, this is greater than their ability to cope.

Starting in Monessen in 2019, technical resources and county municipal service staff went street by street, rating a property’s condition as good, fair, or poor.

A good property is usually new construction or properties without visible signs of deterioration; fair properties have cracked brick or wood, have concrete that is crumbling, or in need of painting; and a bad property has significant cracks in bricks and rotten wood, broken, missing, or boarded up windows, and is a safety hazard.

The information was entered into an online map created for each municipality.

“It really starts with taking a data-driven approach so that communities have the information at their fingertips,” Carpenter said. “They can stick with it, they can understand the problem better rather than just the anecdotal experiences of a few residents. … This is really the reason why these complete inventories of the scourge are carried out.

In Greensburg, blight control efforts have been underway for years. City leaders in 2017 marked some of the worst properties with red “X” signs. In 2020, the city received a $ 10,000 grant from the Realtors Association of Westmoreland, Indiana and Mon Valley to partner with the county to create the full inventory of the scourge.

For Greensburg Mayor Robert Bell, the inventory project could be a turning point, giving leaders a benchmark to track the scourge in the city.

According to the inventory, of the 6,070 properties in Greensburg, 76 are rated as poor, 456 are fair and 5,538 are good. There are 127 vacant properties that can be developed.

“It’s pretty good,” Bell said of the numbers. “Most of the time, everyone maintains their property. Obviously there are other plots that are not in good condition for some reason. At least we know where they are now.

Jeff Raykes, city planning director, said the data will be used to make future decisions. City officials recently hired Pittsburgh Environmental Planning and Design to update the overall city plan. The company will create a scourge mitigation plan that can be stand-alone if necessary.

“Planners often at the local level will come in, understand the problem, but won’t have the capacity to do what is necessary to solve it or to plan around it, and so I think the city values ​​the county and its capacity very much. to create the partnership of the city-county association of realtors, ”said Raykes. “We are delighted to be able to fight against the scourge. “

In Latrobe, city leaders began discussing the scourge inventory earlier this year. Work began in August and involved city and county staff, as well as firefighters and police.

Of the city’s 3,911 properties, 57 are considered poor, according to one map.

Deputy mayor Eric Bartels said city leaders hope to work with stakeholders, including landowners, to help create solutions to the scourge.

“At this early stage, the overall goal is not only to identify all of the properties currently classified as dilapidated and thus work with those owners to work on an improvement plan, but perhaps more importantly, to identify properties at risk of fading and being more proactive in preventing them from falling into the withered category, ”Bartels said.

Similar to Greensburg, Monessen has worked for years to tackle the scourge citywide.

County officials began their scourge inventory of the city’s 5,032 plots in 2019 for the first time. Of these, 383 were rated as poor, 1,838 were fair and 2,811 were good.

“The data is what I expected – most of our dilapidated and vacant properties are in one area,” said Mayor Matthew Shorraw. “We use the data to target degraded plots to put them back on the tax rolls through our vacant property tax exemption program or to determine which properties need to be demolished or redeveloped. “

According to Victoria Baur, county planning coordinator, the late blight inventory project was piloted in Monessen. Baur said city leaders have asked the county to provide them with an inventory as part of their overall planning process.

For Carpenter, the inventory results came as no surprise.

“Other communities could be better, other communities could be much worse,” he said. “So I don’t know if it’s necessarily a surprise. It’s just a fuller understanding.

Carpenter noted that all other municipalities interested in registering the burn are welcome to begin the process.

“If they’re looking to fully understand the scourge and are interested in trying to do something about it, obviously we’d be happy to work with anyone who wants to tackle the problem,” Carpenter said.