“Fill it up?” Not quite

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Paramjit Singh says you can tell how poor this neighborhood is by how much – or how little – people spend on gas.

“We get people who come here and spend $3, $2 or $1 on gas because they have no money,” said the manager of Ohio Gas Mart, a gas station and convenience store in the working-class Idora neighborhood of Youngstown. “Sometimes we even have people come in for 50 cents worth of gas.”

“In some parts of the country you can’t even buy less than $1 of gas,” he added. “There aren’t any jobs here, so people have just enough money to buy gas to get to the store and back.”

While we were talking several cars pulled up to fill up with gas, most of them only for a a few dollars worth.

“Pastor with no church” wants abandoned homes rented to poor

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – We didn’t have to go far to find Stephen Townes; he found us.

While we were nearly finished with an on-camera interview with a local community organizer in front of an abandoned red brick home in Youngstown’s historic district, Townes drove past and yelled out the window, “Save those homes! Don’t tear those homes down!”

We flagged him down and asked him to talk. Reluctant at first, Townes stood talking to us for a good half an hour, then agreed to let us come to his apartment to interview him on film.

Youngstown’s business incubator relies on model of sharing to grow

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Craig Zamary has four full-time employees, but because of where his company is based he says it feels more like 300.

“I can reach out to the other companies here and know that they will share their expertise with me,” said the owner of Green Energy TV. “Just as they know they can ask me to do the same for them.”

Zamary describes Green Energy TV as the “YouTube of the green movement” as it takes videos from around the world on innovations in the alternative energy industry. The company also has an agreement with Transit TV, which provides video feed for buses run by the Los Angeles County Transit Authority.

Reviving a dream of a haven for gang kids

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Madison School has seen better days.

All of the windows have been smashed, and debris and shattered fluorescent light bulbs litter the floor. The paint is peeling off the walls after years of exposure to cold weather, and the occasional book lies abandoned on the floor.

But Pastor Charles Hudson, who runs a group called Bondage Busters that seeks to stem gang violence, sees all of this very differently.

Youngstown looks to future after grappling for decades with past

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – For this Rust Belt city, the hardest part of moving on has been coming to terms with the past.

“We have spent the past 20 to 25 years looking in the rearview mirror,” said Jay Williams, the city’s 38-year-old, independent mayor (above). “Letting go of the past has been difficult for many people because the past was so good.”

Youngstown – named for John Young, an early settler – was a boom town in the first half of the 20th century. The city’s main industry was steel manufacturing and the population grew rapidly and hit 170,000 in 1930.