Great Scene Magazine Article

Photo by Cheryl Jones, NEOCH/Grapevine Photo artist. All rights reserved.

Turn Over the Homes to Homeless People

I did not have time to blog about Michael Gill's article in last week's Scene Magazine. At every gathering of homeless people, the topic of the number of vacant and abandoned houses in the community comes up. The number of abandoned units has grown steadily since 1995, and exploded in 2004 to the present. Now as Michael Gill points out there are three times as many abandoned units in just the city of Cleveland, and that does not include the surrounding suburbs. East Cleveland probably has 40% of their units in serious disrepair, and Cleveland Hts. has seen over 1,500 foreclosures in the last two years. But there are abandoned houses throughout the County. This demonstrates the need for a County Land Bank (click here for the discussion on WCPN on Monday). An urban homesteading program will not solve this problem, but it cannot hurt to try it.

So, in responding to the concerns of the Homeless Congress and their strong desire to try something to pair skilled homeless people (electricians, plumbers, drywallers, and painters) with some of the recent houses that were vacated due to foreclosure. The Congress wanted to put some of these houses before they are stripped clean back into use. We did not ask for a large amount of money, and we just want to see if this could work. We have heard the cautions, and we heard the failures of previous homesteading programs, but we feel that it can't hurt to try. At this point with so many vacant houses, we cannot afford not to try as many solutions as possible. We need the land bank; we need the County Trust Fund; we the proper amount of destruction and rehab; we need an urban homesteading program; and we need a development of parks or urban farming programs to use the land vacated by the foreclosure crisis. It is angering to sleep in the shelter every night while a few door down there is an intact building sitting empty in the shadow of wealth everywhere.

Thanks to Michael Gill who spent a lot of time on this story and interviewed a bunch of homeless people.

Brian
Posts by Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless staff and Board.