City of Monessen Blight Inventory

As part of the Monessen comprehensive planning process, a citywide inventory of blighted properties was conducted in the spring of 2019. This project was conducted in partnership with the City of Monessen, Mackin Engineering, MGR Consulting, and was executed by the Westmoreland County Department of Planning and Development. The purpose of the effort is to support a data-driven, progressive-discipline approach to addressing blight.

The inventory provides a detailed look at property conditions throughout the city, parcel-by-parcel. Properties considered to be blighted are dilapidated, abandoned, and sometimes vacant, and ultimately pose a threat to the health, safety, and welfare of the community. 

During the course of the project, planners physically inventoried all 5,032 parcels in Monessen. Each property was evaluated based off of the exterior appearance of the property utilizing a three-grade  parcel grading system . Parcel grades are visually shown on maps using a three-color system (red=poor, blue=fair, light blue=good). Parcel grades and any additional descriptive notes can be found by clicking on a parcel and viewing the pop-up window.

The map below displays the original blight inventory from 2019 on the left, and an updated version from 2021 on the right. Pull the slider across to see the progress that Monessen is making to fight blight!

This map displays varying degrees of tax delinquency as of June 2021. Parcels with a lesser degree of delinquency are displayed in lighter shades of red while parcels with a greater degree of delinquency are displayed in darker shades of red. Parcels considered to be in “poor” condition, are outlined in black.

• Unsold parcels are those that have gone through tax sale without a buyer purchasing them.
• Judicial Sale parcels are those that are being prepared for judicial tax sale which clears the title of some, but not all, defects.
• Repository parcels are those that are essentially orphaned; meaning no one has purchased at any previous step in the process. They represent the most serious form of tax delinquency.

Data provided by the Westmoreland County Tax Office.

An estimated average of Monessen's city property tax for 2019 is displayed on the map below in five-acre hexagons. Darker colored hexagons indicate a higher tax generation value and lighter colored hexagons indicate a lower tax generation value.

The City of Monessen Police Department supplied incident data from 2014 to 2018. Over 2,000 incidents that correspond to a geographic location have been mapped below. This heat map displays the amount of trespassing, theft, forced entry, loitering, etc., over a five-year period.

Fire data was provided by the City of Monessen Fire Department and includes over 35 structural fire incidents from 2014 through 2018. This heat map of fire incident reports represents the density of structural fires.

Parcels with black outlines represent properties that do not have a structure on them according to 2017 aerial imagery. An important caveat for this data is that individual buildings can be located across several parcels.