TOLEDO, Ohio — Homes in south Toledo are being threatened by severe erosion, and the city is using a grant from FEMA to try to stop it.
The city was told a portion of Wright Avenue could fail completely in the next five years if work wasn’t done. But there was another unexpected time element added.
FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, or BRIC, is where the grant money came from, and it was recently canceled at the federal level. That means any approved BRIC-funded projects had to move forward quickly or risk losing the money entirely.
“You can definitely feel it when you walk or drive by," said Kevin Leonard, who has lived on Wright Avenue for 34 years. "You can feel the little slope to the side of the ravine."
The $1.26 million project aims to stabilize Wr