Latrobe wants to raze 3 dilapidated houses, eyes county funding program

Latrobe hopes to tap a Westmoreland County grant program to help demolish three vacant, dilapidated houses.

The funding originates with the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development and is administered by the county redevelopment authority. If approved, it would require a $250 local match for demolishing a house the city is acquiring at 29 W. Harrison Ave.

Because they are still in private hands, two other houses, in the 600 block of Main Street and the easternmost block of Avenue A, each would require a $1,500 local match for a county demolition grant. Solicitor John Greiner said the city would place liens on those properties to recoup the money spent to raze the structures when the lots are resold.

The Main Street house is “going to come down imminently,” according to Shannon Cypher Hart, the city code enforcement officer. “We need to get it out of there.”

She clarified the house, which has been boarded up, is in danger of collapsing into itself but is not considered a hazard to neighboring properties.

The houses on Main and Harrison both are overgrown with vegetation. The house on Avenue A was deemed uninhabitable in February, Hart said.

City officials acknowledge the three targeted houses are far from the only eyesores in town. In March, the city entered into an agreement to have the county planning and development department conduct an inventory of blighted properties in Latrobe and to help prepare a plan for prioritizing and addressing the properties.

That service is costing Latrobe $12,000, but Hart said the information compiled during the inventory will assist the city in identifying other structures that are most in need of attention.