Housing Revitalization : A combination of approaches

Today's article [1] in the PD distills the core revelations from the first in a series of City Club forum sessions on housing revitalization in Cleveland. Some of the important revelations included one by Thomas Bier of CSU's Levin school declaring that an influx of middle-class homeowners will be critical over the coming years to sustain the city tax base. Mitigating this has been an urban sprawl problem problem that has 1500 city housing units evacuated annually. "Cleveland's growth is crucial to Cuyahoga County", he said. Any regional approach, he added, should hinge on the city's development. Bier also stated that efforts to implement comprehensive housing strategy for the city would likely be undermined by the divisiveness characterized by the 21 city council members with ward-centric interests.

Thomas Brown of the Cleveland Planning Commission, which is working to develop and implement a housing [2] strategy by 2020, had a more positive take on the situation, indicating that migration reversal was happening but required acceleration. The housing plan aims to incorporate affordability, sustainable land development, and energy-efficiency.

The noted gap between planning and implementation appears to be a universal one - we see similar challenges across the board from education, to health care, to quality of life enhancement.  Repeatedly critical success factors including effective cross-functional collaboration, effective leadership, and transparent information sharing come to the forefront across initiatives.

As top-down, comprehensive planning strategies are developed and people work to implement them, other concerned citizens and organizations are finding success with small scale grassroots efforts.  Another article [3] in the Brooklyn Sun discusses a successful housing renovation effort being driven by area nonprofit Rebuilding Together [4], which revitalizes homes owned by low-income residents, particularly the elderly and disabled and brings together corporations, community development organizations and volunteers to rehabilitate homes free of charge. 

Habitat for Humanity [5] is another nationwide nonprofit with area chapters playing its part one newly constructed or reconstructed home at a time. Corporate sponsors [6] donate the necessary funding, appliances and supplies to help complete these affordable housing solutions for the underprivileged.   

Interesting opportunities come to light when one considers the role installation of high-performance, energy conserving appliances can have when coupled with other aspects of green building and design for all of these construction projects, whether low-income oriented or not. Given that an inordinate proportion of the emissions problem contributing to global warming is attributable to inefficient housing design, it only makes sense to apply high-performance design efforts to all constructions.  Consider the impact the volume of work these groups do in disaster-ravaged areas like those devastated by Hurricane Katrina and the environmental impact adds up quickly.

Certainly the reconstructed dwellings should be assessed for lead toxicity or asbestos issues, and these both rectified as part of the process if need be..  I assume this would be the case but one can't be sure.  Certainly worth investigation.