It's quite the trying time for people who lived in the Phoenix House and the city of Struthers recognizes that.

Wednesday night, council found a way to open space for those victims, getting them out of hotels and potentially one step closer to home.

"We worked with our law director to come up with something fairly quickly so that we could pass it under emergency tonight because we know this is an urgent matter," Catherine Cercone Miller, Struthers mayor said. "Our city council was able to approve getting rid of the variants that we had that deemed it student housing only, so it has reverted back to commercial C-1 which is senior living," she said.

The city is working with United Way, Austintown trustees and Direction Home to make it happen.

"The housing stock in this community just when it comes to low income housing, subsidized housing, it's really low. There's a lot of wait lists right now in trying to get these individuals out of a hotel and into a home-like facility this is gonna open up some beds for us," Roxanne Sebest, vice president of United Way of Youngstown said.

The city is also partnering with Senior Van to help meet resident's needs.

"Anytime we have a senior citizen that needs to go to a doctor's appointment we do those on Wednesdays. We go to the grocery store, we take them to Marc's, Walmart, IGA in Struthers, they have a lot in Struthers so we're going to be able to partner with them with that as well," Miller said

About 76 residents remain displaced in hotels and it's unclear how soon they might be able to get into this new building.

"We don't wanna put them out, we really don't. We want them to go somewhere that's safe and where they can feel at home and this is just going to open up some opportunities for us as hopefully some others begin to open up for us as well," Sebest said.

Sebest adds, it could take anywhere from a month to a whole year to get Phoenix House residents back into their homes and they've been working with the building owner to help where they can.