An excavator’s giant, metal claw tore into a condemned Highland Park house Tuesday morning at a ceremony that marked the start of an effort here to tap a new, $10 million Tennessee fund to eliminate blight.
Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprise (CNE), a nonprofit housing organization whose motto is “dedicated to building a better Chattanooga,” got a $25,000 grant from a $10 million Blight Elimination Program administered by the Tennessee Housing Development Agency and funded by the U.S. Treasury’s Hardest Hit Fund.
“Why is CNE bulldozing a home?” CNE President and CEO Martina Guilfoil asked at the ceremony’s opening.
She explained that the condemned home at the corner of South Hawthorne and East 12th streets wasn’t salvageable because of black mold and raw sewage inside of it. It’s being demolished, she said, so it can be replaced with yet-to-be determined affordable housing project, possibly duplexes owned by CNE or smaller homes built by a developer.
CNE got involved, Guilfoil said, after the home’s owner sought help because she lived on a fixed income, and was behind on her payments on the home’s roughly $40,000 outstanding mortgage plus thousands she owed a creditor and $11,000 she owed CNE for a home improvement loan.