All Boarded Up - How Cleveland is Dealing With Mass Foreclosure
Tony Brancatelli, a Cleveland City Councilman, yearns for signs that something like normal life still exists in his ward. Early one morning last fall, he called me from his cellphone. He sounded unusually excited. He had just visited two forlorn-looking vacant houses that had been foreclosed more than a year ago. They sat on the same lot, one in front of the other. Both had been frequented by squatters, and Brancatelli had passed by to see if they had been ... Full Story »
Posted by Leo Romero
My neighborhood in East Cleveland, a first tier suburb of Cleveland, is actually in worse shape. A tiny community of ~3 sq. miles, we had 2,662 vacant properties about 6 months ago, and our rate of foreclosure is higher than Slavic Village. My census tract has ~20% vacant buildings. Still, some of us have strategies. For example, we'd like to do the sort of "deep energy reduction" rehabs (see EHW link) that bring energy costs down so far that the houses become cheap to maintain. There's lots more that can be done.