$$$$TUDY for some more $50,000 + to the Land Bank...

I am going to highlight in BOLD the parts you should definitely read in this post:

 

Started on Feb 08, 2013 by Brian Cummins [1]

This represents the beginning of a response to constituents regarding my eventual vote regarding the City of Cleveland's participation and contribution of $50,000, to a proposed study to analyze and document the linkage between demolition of housing structures and removal of blight to that of the causes and potential reduction of foreclosures. This began as a facebook conversation and due to the response has moved to the Civic Commons. I encourage thoughtful comments and suggestions of how to improve and better utilize our systems ans resources. -- I'll be making a decision on this next week but am likely to vote for the study. We're implementing a comprehensive initiative as best we can and with the resources we have to deal with the vacant and abandoned homes in our community. That includes our public/private partnership to get homes into the hands of responsible people, including residents that live near these structures as well as the local investor that have gone through a screening process and have contracts with claw-back clauses if work is not done to spec and in a timely manner. It also includes demos, which in our first two and half years have included more than 40 structures (out of appx 140) that were either within 1,000 feet of a school or that were partially burned and damaged but somehow sat for more than several years before being demolished. The volume of bank and owner walkaways that began increasing in numbers two years ago have left some structures in the condition of not being feasible to save, having been stripped, severely damaged by vandals or squatters etc.. All along the worst blighted properties have and will take a terrible toll on our real-estate values. The issue is compounded by what was an historical lack of effective code enforcement and difficulties that some home owners had in effectively maintaining their properties Within our ward and in the City in general more has to be done to ensure houses that can be salvaged are not demolished. We've had our share of successes and I believe we've achieved the highest rate of pulling structures out of abandonment and getting them rehabed in the City. We'll continue that work as well as trying to do more to promote historically significant homes and the Cleveland Restroration Society rehab loan product that serves potential new home owners well (@ 1.4% at 12-years, it is the lowest interest and best terms available in the market). The issue has been reported in an oversimplified way pitting the need for demo work with the desire to mothball and rehab. The issue is much more complicated and nuanced and there are lots of best practices and work being done that should be applauded. The bashing of anything and everything the County Land Bank is doing is counterproductive. My office and the local development office has had an excellent working relationship with the County and City and we’re achieving a great deal of success in coping with the huge volume of vacant and abandoned properties we have in the neighborhood. There are individual abuses within most systems but a trashing of the entire system achieves little, whereas working to improve the system and trying to gain benefits from it for our community is what I’m elected to do. See initial facebook conversation here -- http://www.facebook.com/brianjcummins