I have been reading several articles in The Post-Journal lately about zombie properties. As I understand it, an appropriate definition of that term would be “a home that is condemned, or uninhabitable, and should be torn down”

I am writing this letter from the home I grew up in in Jamestown. My parents bought it in 1955 and raised six kids in it. We still own it. I am pretty sure we are one of the only owners from that era still living there within a three or four square block area. I remember the neighborhood in the 1960s. There were some older people living in a few of the houses, but most of the houses were filled with large working class families. I can still go down the street and name everyone who lived in each house and how many kids they had. There were twenty one kids in total in four houses that stood next to each other, including ours. It was a lower middle class neighborhood at the time, but each house was cared for. We had pride in our homes. It is a neighborhood close to Love School.

Today it is a zombie neighborhood. I call it that because there are plenty of zombie homes, only there are people living in them. These are homes no one should be living in, in the condition they stand. Most of these houses should be torn down. Then there are the real zombie houses. Down on the next corner sit two burned out homes. Last week on the same corner there was a shooting. This week a woman was held by knifepoint. There have been murders in the same area. The neighborhood is an utter disaster. I don’t know how to else to describe it.

I asked a real estate agent to look at my house to see what it would fetch if I wanted to sell it. It’s a two family house that we used as a one family house because we needed the room. I have kept it up the best I can. I’m not bragging when I say it’s one of the nicer houses in the neighborhood. It’s a pretty low bar. It’s got new windows, and new siding. There are peony bushes filling the front yard, a rhododendron bush that’s about 40 years old which is currently in bloom, azaleas, beautiful orange day lilies, rose bushes, and two hydrangea bushes. It’s a huge, sturdy home, built in 1885 that has fourteen rooms with most of the original woodwork and wood floors. Two sun porches. She told me it would sell in one week, for cash, to a “slum landlord”. Both apartments would be rented immediately and in two years it would be destroyed. I told her I refused to sell it under those conditions. I would only sell it if the owner was going to live in the house. My homeowners insurance went from $550 two years ago to $2,400 this year! The insurance company told me it was because of the crime, the area I lived in, and the arson rate in town. It’s embarrassing to tell you what the house would sell for. I will probably need a new roof one day soon. It will cost me about a third of what the house will sell for to put a new roof on. The value of the property wouldn’t increase by one dollar with a new roof. Please someone tell me what incentive it gives me to put more money into the house. I am stuck with a very decent house that, because I live in a zombie neighborhood, I either have to keep pumping money into it or sell it and see it destroyed. For now I am trying to do the right thing and keep my property. In my mind I keep thinking if I keep my house looking good, it might encourage others in the neighborhood to do the same.

These cannot be my only options.

Thirty percent of the people in Jamestown live under the national poverty rate.That is double the national average. In my ward it’s almost 50 percent. I wrote to my Councilperson to talk to her about this problem. She didn’t reply for weeks. It was only after I had left her several phone messages that she called me back. Until we, as a community, along with our leaders deal with this issue of zombie neighborhoods our entire town is diminished.

There is a rebirth downtown after 100 million dollars, or more, was spent to encourage tourism. I don’t begrudge the town that opportunity. I wish it well and pray it works out. What I would like to see is the focus shift from downtown to finding grants for neighborhoods.. How many roofs would 100 million dollars pay for? How many houses could be rehabbed? How many zombie neighborhoods could be saved for 100 million dollars? Maybe it is time to tear down large areas of these neighborhoods. If the town is having a rebirth, a renaissance, and I believe it is, it has to be a renaissance that reaches everyone. Especially the zombie neighborhoods. We cannot build Disneyland downtown and ignore the very real problems of the rest of the city. We have to start with the low-hanging fruit, the slumlords who own 30 or 40 of these properties. Each time I come home to Jamestown, I see more and more of these neighborhoods. It’s like a disease that we had better deal with now before it spreads over a more vast area.

The city of Jamestown is electing a new mayor this fall. I will be listening very carefully to what each candidate says about housing and what their solutions for zombie neighborhoods are going to be.

As a homeowner, I can’t hold out much longer.

Tom Andolora is a resident of Jamestown and Queens.