COLUMBUS, Ohio — For the past four months, CrimeTracker 10 looked into the number of homes and businesses shut down by the city of Columbus for various violations, including drug trafficking, prostitution and other violent crime.
Since January 2019, more than 150 properties were given court orders to shut down. Most are residential homes that were rented out. Others include apartments, bars, markets, gas stations and after-hours establishments.
Not all properties were boarded up or closed down completely. In some cases, the city says they were able to work with the property owners to abate the nuisance without having to board up a home or shut down a business.
In this interactive map, CrimeTracker 10 plotted each property the city went after since the beginning of 2019. The largest concentrations fell near Linden, Eastmoor, Franklinton, the Hilltop and in several neighborhoods south of Columbus.
“We’ve been very aggressive, not just on the Hilltop, but across the city on drug houses and violent property,” Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein said. “The families that live around here deserve better.”
Some people who live in the Hilltop neighborhood say the crime doesn’t just disappear after a property is shut down.
“They just go to the next one,” said Tamara Robison, who lives a few doors down from a home on Ogden Avenue that was shut down by the city in March. “Whether it be down the street or the next street over, I mean, it’s never-ending.”
Klein says despite what appears to be a revolving door, each boarded-up home helps disrupt the daily flow of violence, drugs and prostitution.
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