In the New York Times, Alex Kotlowitz visits my home town of Cleveland, Ohio to find that it is all boarded up. I grew up in Cleveland right in the middle of it just a few miles from the famous Cuyahoga River. Cleveland was a modest town with lots of blue collar workers in scores of industries. The city had a very large and very substantial housing stock. Over the years, as industry declines, the creative class fled, and as technology evolved the city declines. When a city like Cleveland declines it leaves behind something, and that something is an abandoned housing stock. Cleveland now has between 10,000 and 15,000 abandoned and boarded up houses. Of course this is not new. When I was growing up in Cleveland, the whole east side of the city was abandoned, houses were torn down, and the Cleveland Clinic expanded in much of the space, the rest was left abandoned like my old neighborhood.
This is in part a legacy of industrial restructuring, the sub prime mortgage problem, and the long term subsidy to housing dating back to the great depression. Whatever the cause it seems to be well picked up by Richard in his article in the Atlantic. Cities come and go. In an article by Phil McCann and I we show that this has been the case for over 1,000 years and is nothing new. Baghdad 1,000 years ago was the most important city in the world.
The question is how do we deal with the housing abandonment in this country. For a large part of the problem is that we have an overstock of housing that no one will ever use. Should we start the write off of the trillions of dollars worth of old abandoned, or nearly abandoned housing, wipe the slate clean and just move on? Perhaps as Richard suggests we should just abandon the support for home ownership, eliminate the tax subsidy, and use the savings to clean up and abandoned housing mess.
March 5th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
We need more immigration from China.
Give visas to any Chinese who agree to live in Michigan. And Ohio.
Gary, Indiana has so many abandoned houses that they want the Indiana National Guard to come in and knock ‘em all down.
There’s a big racial component to all this. Those neighborhoods are (were?) supermajority African-American.
Now, you can say that the subprime lenders “preyed” on African-American borrowers, but it is undeniable that we’ve had federal policy aimed at increasing African-American “homeownership” (it’s in quotes because you arguably don’t own a home that you don’t put any equity into).
Was that good policy?
Much like affirmative action, shouldn’t the results of a policy matter more than the feelings of those promoting the policy? And why don’t the people pushing these policies ever get held responsible for the unintended consequences of them?
March 5th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Are there tax incentives and active support by the city authorities for businesses to move into these areas, and for developers to redevelop them with modern housing (i.e., gentrification)?
Or is this against the interests of the local politicians who rely on their remaining “old” voter base to be re-elected?
March 5th, 2009 at 9:23 pm
Zoltan, tremendous physical progress had been made in Cleveland’s neighborhoods since the early 1990s. When I came to Cleveland at that time as a CDC director, Cleveland was gaining much needed momentum and in due time, became what I consider a leader in the field of community and neighborhood development. You would have liked what you saw – neighborhoods recreated and reinvigorated through smart planning and good design, new developments, scattered site rehab and new construction – and we couldn’t build fast enough. Cleveland developers, both non-profit and private, were building over 1,000 new units per year, ranging in price from $120,000 to $400,000+ and all were selling. But as Tony Brancatelli implied in the article, the number of current foreclosures and the aftermath buries this number and the boarded up homes have swept certain areas in a tsunamai like fashion. Most of the progress, twenty years of progress, entire careers for some of us, essentially erased.
Mike L., there are plenty of tax incentives and incredible support from the City and the County for new businesses…we have all of the tools, abatement, tax credits, enterprise zone, empowerment zone etc. So yes, there are many state and local programs to create businesses, build off of the world class medical facilities, retain immigrants and entrepreneurs from Case, etc…and they are all working to some extent. But we have focussed on to the manufacturing base for so long, we have fallen behind in and like the housing situation, these new jobs are a blip on the screen as compared to what has been lost.
March 6th, 2009 at 8:29 am
Managed decline. Purchase the abandoned houses, bulldoze them and create wildlife reserves.
I’m fed up of “regeneration” strategies that expect all cities to be winners. They all say the same thing: we need to attract higher-income groups. Whether this is “the creative class” or just “professionals” it essentially means – let’s get rid of the poor and unqualified, with the subtext of “if gas chambers were legal, we’d use them”.
No local political regime is going to advocate abandonment. Instead, they’re willing to waste bajillions of public money on chasing the same dwindling supply of talent. Unless, as buzzcut suggests, countries import talent from overseas (but of course, it will no doubt be along the same system of “apartheid – no poor people please, they should be gassed”), then regional or national economies need to make the unpopular decisions that are wasting so much money. It’s ironic that a lot of these regeneration strategies are doubtlessly calling for increased efficiency in industry and the public sector…
March 6th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
My proposal wasn’t serious, but we know that the Chinese think of their large population as a problem. The one child policy is one example.
They would more than likely be willing to “export” a significant number of their population.
Economic growth is often just a matter of arithmatic. A growing population drives a certain amount of economic growth almost automatically.
So we have two problems: too much population in one country, and too little population in certain American cities. Why can’t both groups get together and solve their problems simultaneously?
I mean, the Chinese are rapidly urbanizing. Why should they build new cities when we’ve got perfectly good cities that need people?
Just sell Michigan to the Chinese and be done with it!
April 15th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
This letter is in response to the article “All Boarded Up” written by ALEX KOTLOWITZ.
During my time (1993 to 1999) as President of {the now defunct} South East Clevelanders Together I worked to promote community organizing in Ward 12 {Slavic Village} to address quality of life issues {such as crime watch} in an aggressive and systematic manner. During that time, Ward 12 was represented by current City of Cleveland Director of Building and Housing Edward W. Rybka and the former Broadway Area Housing Coalition nka Slavic Village Development headed then by current Ward 12 Councilman Anthony Brancatelli. Needless to say, it did not take long for our organization to clash with the former Councilman’s housing group. Their primary objective was to build and rehabilitate housing without any real regard for the other issues affecting the residents and business owners. They too took the worst houses and put people in them who had no ability {or desire} to pay. In fact, once they completed their first rehabilitation on any given street that house soon became a haven for various social malcontents. Once the “single apple spoiled the barrel” the remaining law-abiding residents moved thus adding further to the catastrophe. Now the Cleveland City Council wants to extend the boundaries of Ward 12 beyond the current boundaries of Ward 15 which {as luck would have it} would include my residence. Councilman Brian Cummins has been a fine representative for Ward 15 but as for Ward 12 Councilman Anthony Brancatelli; he will do for Ward 15 {Old Brooklyn} was he has and will continue to do for Ward 12 {Slavic Village}.