SpringfieldNewsSun.com

Springfield, Ohio — On a street scattered with empty, run-down homes and vacant lots, their house is something of an anomaly.

When Zach and Brandy Mounts moved into 321 Rice St., it was boarded up with holes in the walls and no sink in the kitchen. Across the street were three houses that would soon be gone.

"There was prostitution on the corners, crackheads in there," Zach said. "Then the city started tearing them down."

Now those houses are gone. In their place is yet another vacant lot.

The Mounts' home was built in 1900. They secured it with a $2,000 down payment on a 30-year land contract. In their seven years there, they've poured thousands of dollars into renovations, many of them undertaken by Zach, who runs a one-man home-improvement business, Trizak Home Improvements.

The renovations included digging a pond in the backyard, putting in a sink in the kitchen, and repairing the floors. Brandy still wants new windows and a new furnace to save money on utilities.

But their home sits practically in the center of Census tract 12, Block Group 6, where 60.7 percent of home loans granted in the last two years were high-cost and high-risk.

As they poured money into their home, their neighbors — victims of shady home-lending practices — were struggling to keep theirs.

Now the neighborhood might soon get its own series of renovations. As part of an ambitious plan to remake the housing market, the city plans to demolish more blighted structures in the area, and replace them with new units.

The city also might acquire other units, rehab and then rent them out to people making not more than 50 percent of the city's average median income.

And that's just a small part of what's in the works for the city's housing market.