PUEBLO — The City of Pueblo wants to create more affordable homes, but not necessarily in a traditional sense. The housing department is working on fixing up abandoned houses and making them livable again.
When driving through Pueblo, the boarded up, burned and abandoned homes are easy to spot.
“We all know that we have a problem with vacant homes,” said Melissa Cook, Housing Administrator for the City of Pueblo.
She said the vacant homes that are scattered across the city are fire hazards, eye sores and hotspots for dumping trash.
“These homes have been vacant for decades, some of them up to 50 years,” said Cook. “We have to tackle the properties before they become so neglected that they need to be demolished."
She said they want to fix them up rather than tear them down.
“The goal is to get these units back into production,” said Cook.
Through site visits and inspections, Cook said they have identified over 230 homes across the city that can be rehabilitated.
“It's also identifying vacant homes that have no responsive owners, and that is the key," said Cook. “Many of these homes already have liens because they have had weed violations or other code enforcement violations. We will enforce those liens that will ultimately achieve new ownership. So go from the non responsive owner to a new owner that will then bring that unit back into production within a finite period of time, as defined by our office.”
The city will work with public and private partnerships to purchase and restore homes in city limits.
“We will need to partner with folks in the public, that could be nonprofits, that could be for profits to come in and rehabilitate these homes,” said Cook.
Cook said Pueblo needs more affordable housing and homes that are already builand t can be saved are the solution.
“Any new units in Pueblo help achieve affordability. So, the goal of this is to put an additional, you know, up to 300 units back into production that otherwise are not so,” said Cook.
The houses beyond repair will be demolished. Cook said they need funding to safely tear down nearly 60 homes so people could then fully rebuild them.
She said their main focus with the pilot program is working on buildings that can be fix, re-purposed and hopefully become homes again.
___
A family in Colorado City says illegal dumping near their home is becoming a safety issue
One official told News5 the trash piles could be infested with rats or other dangerous factors, so they are waiting to work with the health department to remove trash from the area.
____
Watch KOAA News5 on your time, anytime with our free streaming app available for your Roku, FireTV, AppleTV and Android TV. Just search KOAA News5, download and start watching.
