Danville Mayor Rickey Williams Jr. says he realizes that addressing the problem of unoccupied buildings in the city is not going to be easy. He addressed members of a newly formed Housing Committee noting that looking back – Danville’s highest population was in 1970 when it was just shy of 43,000 with no prison. Fast-forwarding to 2010 – Danville only had 33,000 residents, including 2000 prisoners….
{‘’In the meantime, the city has continued to grow,’’ said the Mayor. ‘’We have all the new developments across the lake – Chateau Estates, Denvale, Denvale West, Lake Shores, Stonegate. And all the beautiful new senior facilities that we have- such as Liberty Village, Villas of Hollybrook, ect. Well, long story short – we have a city that’s built for 45-thousand people but we only have approximately 30-thousand free people living here. What does that mean? We have a third – or 33 – almost 40-percent too many structures in the city, or more structures than we do people,’’ said Mayor Williams during an interview with VermilionCountyFirst.com News.}
Mayor Williams adds you have to be smart and strategic to address the problem of vacant structures…
{‘’We are going to be continuing to demolish structures throughout the community that are dangerous – and we have a list for prioritization of those. But then you have to start being smart,’’ said the Mayor. ‘’We can’t just from there tear down a house here and there. We have to work neighborhoods. Right now the neighborhood we’re working on strong is west downtown. We made a promise. We made a big investment with the Renaissance group many years ago, and then we kind of left them to flounder. We’re getting that cleared up and we are already starting to see results and progress from that work,’’ added Mayor Williams.
The new Housing Committee is reviewing city ordinances regarding housing and trying to determine areas where changes may be needed. Danville Alderman Tom Stone noted the high number of rental properties in the community. He says the city needs to be able to develop programs to help renters – if possible. During its next meeting on March 11th the committee plans to review the City of Danville’s Rental Housing Registration ordinance.
