CINCINNATI — Erica Riddick's home is — in many ways — hidden. She has fought for years to make sure she and her neighbors have access to their homes, continue to get city services and don't get forgotten. And she still hopes it serves as a cautionary tale.
"It's not easy to get to my house," she said. "People get lost the first time they come pretty much every time."
The Northside street her home was listed on for decades is now gone. And in the last few months, her address changed from Vandalia Avenue to Chambers Street.
The stretch of Vandalia Avenue she once parked on, located in front of her home, no longer exists in Hamilton County records. It was a private street, marked so on a street sign above it, and a new owner brought fencing, an option to pay for parking and eventually a closure starting in 2016.
"We're taxpaying citizens that deserve to have city services that our tax dollars support," Riddick said. "There's got to be a solution in there. I refuse to accept that there's not some way to make this better."
A street struggle
Riddick's been fighting for answers from the city, and guarantees of services and safety, since 2016. WCPO first profiled her fight in January 2020, as she was suing the new property owner and the city. It came after at least one council member expressed support for Riddick and her neighbors, but a previous city manager called the fight "a private property dispute."
The city got dismissed from the suit, and Riddick would ultimately lose the case and an appeal. But the problems persist.
"I've tried to schedule meetings with the city manager's office, different council members, even zoning and there's kind of a blanket refusal to speak to me," Riddick said.
This fall, WCPO connected Riddick to Cincinnati City Councilman Seth Walsh and his office. In the last couple of months, they have collectively laid out concerns and shared them with the city manager's office.
Problems persist
Riddick says three of her neighbors haven't been getting mail, or are only intermittently getting mail. The recent address changes could help that, but access is still a concern. Property owners put up mailboxes along the fenceline in the grass on the property line to her front yard.
She says the U.S. Postal Service told her neighbors they are at the edge of a route change. And without access to that block of Vandalia, her neighbors are forced to flip their front and backyards
"We've created a unique situation over on this block," Riddick said. "So, if we're going to say that residents can't access their homes through Vandalia and they have to use easements and we've created conditions where front yards have become back yards and they're butting up against backyards, let's just create a plan."
Riddick now accesses her home via an earthen easement off Chambers Street. It is also land she doesn't own. It's how she carries her garbage to Chambers and how, in theory, first responders would get to her house and a neighboring house, also no longer listed as being on Vandalia Avenue.
Three of Riddick's other neighbors use an easement off Dane Avenue. Both easements are marked by signs, installed in the last few months, showing the properties' new addresses.
She's already taken zoning concerns around the easements to the city to address — some acknowledged, some ignored.
"There's no real agency that governs easements so whenever there's a problem that comes up, I can't call the city," she said.
Riddick has had luck, WCPO confirmed, with getting the Cincinnati Fire Department to confirm it can access her property and that of her neighbors through the easements they are currently using, both on Dane and Chambers.
She met with the Northside Community Council president, crews from CFD engine 20 and fire prevention.
Cincinnati Fire Assistant Chief Steven Breitfelder confirmed to WCPO that the department used the visit to create emergency plans for the properties.
1. 3 Pre plans have been created and uploaded to dispatch. 1308-1312 Vandalia (now Dane Address) 1314-1320 Vandalia, and 1315-1319 Vandalia.
2. Our crew pulled hose lines off our frontline engine to make sure that we can effectively respond to a fire at these addresses. We can stretch preconnected attack lines without any issues to all of these addresses. Truck 20 also preplanned it with us.
3. 1308-1312 Vandalia had their addresses changed to Dane with signage put up. This was not done at our instruction but does make responses to these homes easier.
"All members assigned to the 20's house are aware of the plan, and the files are attached to the address ranges in the CAD," said Breitfelder. "The dispatcher will also broadcast on the radio where the best entry addresses are off of chambers. We have seen this work on EMS runs of the 1308-1312 address range."
Riddick said she was not aware of the finalized plans and had not seen the hose run test.
"I hope to achieve some resolution to the fire safety concern," she said. "I hope that will pave the way toward addressing the other service issues Vandalia residents face."
Across the city
In 2020, WCPO found the city has hundreds of private streets. They are generally stretches of roadway that are owned by residents, homeowner groups or businesses. Owners of private streets are legally responsible for maintenance, such as street repaving and repairs. The people who live on those streets get some city services, such as garbage collection, but not others, such as snowplowing.
Riddick won a lottery to buy her home for $1 in 1999. It was part of a Department of Housing and Urban Development program called Dollar Homes, an initiative designed to help first-time homebuyers and stabilize neighborhoods. The City of Cincinnati administered it.
She says this particular situation wasn’t spelled out at all when she bought her home. Not by anyone with the nonprofit Homesteading and Urban Redevelopment Corp. that transferred the property to her and not by anyone with the city of Cincinnati, which managed the HUD Dollar Homes program for the nonprofit at the time.
With renewed attention at City Hall, Riddick also hopes her story can continue to be one of caution for communities and prospective homeowners.
"This will continue to fester until we decide that we're going to be a community and we're going to care for each other and we're going to do something about this because we want to and it's the right thing," she said.
Brian Niesz, Jay Warren, and Lucy May contributed to the reporting of this story, going back to before January 2020.
