In Youngstown, builders are putting up new apartments and other housing to meet the demand created by people who have begun moving back to the area some to work in the health care sector.
Apartment construction in the Rust Belt city in the Mahoning Valley made national news last month when the New York Times reported that the city ranked seventh in the nation – ahead of Las Vegas, Sacramento and Indianapolis – in the number of new apartment units projected to be built by 2028.
But city officials said while the surprising news has generated a lot of media interest, it isn’t true.
“We’re nowhere near those numbers,” said John Noga, Youngtown’s housing director. “It’s grossly overestimated.”
RentCafe, the rental listing and market analysis site that provided the numbers in the report, said the numbers came from their sister company Yardi Matrix, a business development and asset management tool, that analyzed new apartment construction data across multiple U.S metropolitan areas.
“Our model encompasses the entire Mahoning Valley, not just the city of Youngstown,” RentCafe said in a statement. “This broader geographical scope may account for some of the discrepancy in numbers. Also, our projections include not only units currently in the pipeline but also potential future developments.”
The report showed Youngstown was projected to build 6,449 units by 2028.
“That would be wonderful if we could do that within that short amount of time,” said Trisha Howe, executive director at the Home Builders Association of the Valley, a nonprofit that represents the building industry.
Between 2020 and 2023, Howe estimates about 190 new apartments were built in Youngstown.
"I don't believe that that 6,000 number is accurate,” she said.
According to a Youngstown building permit report, 352 houses have been built since 2022 and only 45 apartment units were constructed. The largest building constructed during this time was a four-unit complex.
Howe said that the population of Youngtown is growing due to new jobs and schools in the area.
“We do have people coming into town because we have a large health care industry here, our skilled trades workforce is very large in this area and we have a lot of small businesses that have opened up here,” Howe said. “So, things are growing. I just don't know that they would be growing at that rate of 6,000.”