Elected officials from the city of Cleveland and state of Ohio swung sledgehammers across kitchen cabinets in a vacant house on W. 127th Street Friday, kicking off a new program that they say will rehabilitate and sell 100 houses in some of the city’s mixed-income neighborhoods.
The more than $10 million initiative is working to not only increase home values and bolster neighborhoods but also attract and retain middle-income residents often lost to surrounding suburbs.
"As our neighborhoods have aged, our residents have aged. These are the neighborhoods that have started to slowly deteriorate," said Tania Menesse, the CEO and President of Cleveland Neighborhood Progress, the organization facilitating the program. "It's so critical that we invest in them — when just getting a handful of homes, their values up — by strengthening the main streets. We can really bring that vitality back to the neighborhoods."
Targeted areas will include Collinwood, Lee-Harvard, Old Brooklyn and West Park.
Neighborhoods at the ends of the economic spectrum often get the most attention. It's necessary to encourage further economic development in areas that are doing relatively well and at the same time provide housing for lower-income residents and spur growth in parts of town that are struggling, but that means some of the other neighborhoods can get lost in the shuffle, said Councilmember Charles Slife, who represents Ward 17, which includes West Park, Kamm's Corner and parts of the Purtias neighborhoods.
"There are neighborhoods in Cleveland that are seeing massive private investment, and then there's a lot of government programs to help our most distressed neighborhoods, but so much of Cleveland doesn't neatly fall into those two categories," Slife said at a Friday press conference. "Too often I've found that people end up leaving the neighborhood or not choosing the neighborhood in the first place, simply because the path of least resistance is to move to suburban communities."
Menesse said the funds will be used to not only update homes but build other amenities like an office, second bathroom or additional bedrooms often found in suburban homes but "not common in Cleveland." The homes are expected to sell at a price point that is higher than the median Cleveland housing stock, but likely less than comparable suburban homes.
The homes will be sold to those who want to live in the city; Menesse said the program is also an effort to push out negligent or out-of-state landlords that buy up aging housing stock to rent.
"It's a real partnership with our community development corporations who really understand how we can intervene and, frankly, stop the wholesale investments that are coming in where our homes are being bought up and turned into rentals that are not strengthening the communities."
Cleveland Neighborhood Progress is backed by $3 million in state funding, $7.3 million from Cleveland's American Rescue Plan and $300,000 from both the Rocky Community Fund and KeyBank.
Menesse estimates the current round of construction will take four to six years to complete, but she said the group plans to continue fundraising to increase the scope of the project.
