Mountains of garbage bags, splintered doors, cracked sink basins and branches were piled high Friday morning on the corner of E. 65th and Sebert Avenue.
The small but diligent group of volunteers worked quickly in the rain to pick up trash and discarded needles strewn across the yard. While major structural issues remained, such as a collapsed porch and smashed windows, there was a marked difference in how the property looked compared to before.
It’s a site that has long plagued the Slavic Village neighborhood on Cleveland's East Side as a hotbed for crime and drug use.
The property owner is doing nothing to address the concerns, said Ward 12 Councilmember Rebecca Maurer. In the owner's absence, she mobilized a group of volunteers to take action.
“When we have trash and drug paraphernalia accumulating on a lot like this, it’s not just an eyesore, it’s a safety issue,” Maurer said. “It attracts crime, it attracts poor decision making … We couldn’t let it go on like this.”
A midday shooting last Friday afternoon was the “final straw,” said Neighborhood Pets Executive Director Becca Britton. Britton’s clinic serving low-income pet owners is across the street from the property. She said she’s been raising alarms with the city for over a year.
“Right now, the neighborhood is inundated with drug use, crime and just simply garbage,” Britton said. “All of us business owners, residents, and people who visit Slavic Village are tired of it.”
It’s clear the cleanup efforts were not only much needed, but much appreciated. Passersby honked their horns at volunteers and jabbed thumbs up, while a woman across the street shouted and cheered from her open window.
Maurer said she’s been receiving complaints about the area before she even entered office, citing it as a prime example of property-owner negligence.
It’s a growing problem in Slavic Village. Property owners, Maurer said, are holding tight to their dilapidated buildings in hopes that enough people will fix up their homes to increase property value for incoming developers.
“People think they have the golden goose,” she said. “They think they bought properties in the ‘next Tremont’ … but what’s happened is we now have this commercial corridor of people holding onto buildings and not fixing them.”
City officials like Maurer have been increasingly vocal about bringing negligent property owners to task in a city with a large renter population, aging housing stock and potentially dangerous vacant lots.
The recently-passed city budget allotted $600,000 more than originally proposed to the Department of Building and Housing. Director Sally Martin said the city intends to use the funds to hire six new inspectors and aims to be more “proactive” with code enforcement instead of responding to complaints.
Council members are also exploring other long-term strategies to address the issue, Maurer said, such as updating housing codes.
“We’re out here today almost to say, 'We know we can’t fix those long-term issues overnight, but some things are in our control,'” she said. “And a cleanup like this is in our control, so let’s come together to do it, but we’re absolutely looking at those long term changes.”
