Combatting Foreclosure

Last month, 60 Minutes featured a segment about former Cuyahoga County Treasurer Jim Rokakis, the Cuyahoga County LandBank that he founded, and their efforts to deal with the foreclosure crisis in Cleveland.

Rokakis, also a former Cleveland City Councilman, had the perfect perch from which to observe the spreading epidemic of foreclosed and abandoned properties across the County — and to understand the cancerous effects in many of Cleveland’s neighborhoods, as well as in the inner ring suburbs.

The Plain Dealer has reported that housing vacancy rates in Cleveland surged 65% in the past decade as neighborhoods declined and emptied — “and the result is ghostly.”

“According to the 2010 census, nearly 20% of Cleveland’s housing units have no one living in them… more than 8,000 homes disappeared from the urban landscape between 2000 and 2010… push(ing) Cleveland’s vacancy rate to 22%.”  The epidemic is most severe on the East Side — “where most census tracts are at least 25% vacant and, in some neighborhoods, less than half the housing capacity of 2000 is in use today.”

My firm, The Project Group, was retained to perform an assessment of the current situation in Glenville — an East Side Cleveland neighborhood of beautiful old homes, nestled between stately Rockefeller  Park and booming University Circle. We were also asked to recommend areas to target for potential concentrated demolition.

One such Glenville area includes a 9-block neighborhood just one street north of Case Western   Reserve University’s new residential and athletic complexes. In this 19.5-acre area, we found that 55% of the houses are vacant and/or distressed. On several of the blocks, the vacant and distressed rate ranged from 70% to 100%.

By recommending a concentrated demolition for this area, we are setting the path for a re-imagined Cleveland, where this space can be utilized as green space, a community garden, or for commercial redevelopment to take advantage of the area’s proximity to Case Western.

We support the message Jim Rokakis delivered during his 60 Minutes interview, as well as the work of the Cuyahoga Land Bank, and are proud to take part in the vision for Cleveland’s future.