PBS NewsHour Highlights Cleveland

Photo by Cheryl Jones of the Grapevine Photo Project

Foreclosures and Clearing Land Focus of NewsHour Report

Last night was an excellent piece on the effort by the Land Bank and the City of Cleveland to clear some of the degrading housing stock as a result of the foreclosure tsunami. The usual suspects were featured including Gus Frangos of the Land Bank, Frank Ford of NPI, Councilman Tony Brancatelli, and Housing Court Judge Raymond Pianka. It was a nice touch to talk to Manfield Frazier about his vineyard in Hough. The piece was centered at Ground Zero of the foreclosure crisis in Slavic Village. They showed houses coming down as part of the thousands that we have destroyed over the last five years. Frank Ford did a good job describing the economics of this crisis with the reality that it costs$7,500 to take down a property while it can cost $100,000 to renovate that property with new electrical, new plumbing and new furnace.

There was a interesting discussion about the flipping of these homes using the internet, and the nasty practices of some of the banks (we are talking to you Deutsche Bank). They sold a property for $500 that was an eyesore, and then the new owner tried flipping it on the internet with a profit of $1,000 to an out of state buyer (sucker) with no intention of doing anything to the property. They are just hoping that the land value will turn around and they can make a profit. These vultures are just trying to earn money off of the misery of hard hit neighborhoods. It was a good piece. Check it out.

Brian
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Neighborhood Stabilization Announced Today

HUD Announces Funds for Cuyahoga County Foreclosure Crisis

U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan announced today that HUD is awarding $2 billion in Recovery Act funding to states, local governments and non-profit housing developers, under HUD’s Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP), to spur economic development in hard-hit communities and create jobs. Nearly 60 grantees are receiving awards.

HUD has released the list of states, local governments and nonprofits that have been awarded Neighborhood Stabilization Program 2 (NSP2) grants. Unlike the original NSP program, NSP2 funds were awarded by competition to states, local governments, nonprofits, and consortia of nonprofits, which were permitted to submit proposals in partnership with for-profit entities. The states receiving the largest allocations of NSP2 funds include California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio. Additionally, four national applicants received NSP2 awards.

Cuyahoga County will receive $40.84 million in NSP2 funds. The City of Cleveland, the Foreclosure Task Force, County Land Bank and CMHA will work to get these funds out onto the streets quickly. At least one quarter of the funds must serve low income individuals.

Brian
Posts reflect the opinion of those who sign the entry.

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.