Another Good CAHA Meeting

Good Information About the State of Cleveland

The Cuyahoga Affordable Housing Alliance Meeting from last week was one of the better meetings. We had David Cooper from the Cleveland Department of Building and Housing, who went through the gruesome details facing the city. Cooper talked about the City's efforts to manage this crisis by taking down 950 buildings last year compared to 220 in 2006. The City is estimating 8,000 to 10,000 structures abandoned. They are working on search warrants in order to enter houses with questionable ownership to determine who is responsible for maintaining these properties. The City has put up another $6 million for this year. Last year, with the assistance of Cuyahoga County, the City of Cleveland spent $9 million to take down houses. The Department has created an Operation Efficiency Task force to make sure that they are boarding and taking down properties in an efficient manner with coordination of all other City Departments. The City has boarded up 1,860 properties in the first four months of this year.

The City Department of Building and Housing averages $8,500 to demolish a building. The one benefit of the crisis is that Cleveland is getting a pretty good deal to demolish a house. Simple economic theory says that with volume comes economies of scale, and cheaper prices to take down these homes. Wards 5, 12, 10, and 14 are the hardest hit.

CMHA also gave a presentation on the state of affairs when they are being funded at 83% of what everyone agrees is the cost of running the agency. They have 8,700 units occupied, which is the highest number since 1989. CMHA has about 1,500 move outs every year and 6,700 people on the waiting list. 60% of those waiting are waiting for a one bed room apartment, because the housing authority has designated 29% of their units for those 50 and over. With welfare reform, now only 4% of the total CMHA households receive cash assistance as their main source of income. 20% are employed and 21% receive a disability check as their primary income. 23% have no income at all. There are 17,000 total people living in a CMHA properties throughout the community. The Housing Authority was represented by Scott Pollack who went through all the current modernization development projects to keep their units in good working order. The Housing Authority gets knocked, but they actually perform a vital function as a key agency in preserving our critical infrastructure. I wish that they would get rid of their senior only (50 and over) housing, but otherwise they do a good job with shrinking resources. We should all make this a high priority to restore CMHA funding for next year.

Finally, Steve Wertheim came to report on final results from 2007. There were 148,100 calls made in Cuyahoga County to First Call for Help. The two biggest reasons for calling were requests for help with utility bills at 14,900 calls and information about the local food pantry at 14,600 calls. Homeless shelters (11,100 calls) and foreclosure assistance (7,900 calls) were the next largest number of calls. Home rental listings rounded out the top five with 5,700 calls and job finding assistance was close behind with 4,300 calls.

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