Politicos can't argue with photos and can't claim distortion of the "FACTS."

 (This is sickening--Chatham WAS a charming street)

Why did this have to be demolished?

What did it cost to build it, to buy it recently, to demolish it, both in terms of money and of energy and other resources?

Would it have been cheaper in the short term for OCNW to have given it, say for $1, to somebody who would appreciate it?

Why wasn't this done?

How do we all benefit from this demolition?

Who benefits from this demolition?

Lots of questions. Were any broached before the insult to the community occurred?

Who was responsible?

What's to recover?

You and Gloria ARE the heavy hitters when it comes to community activism.  Keep making noise.

I have to admit, I stepped out of the local So of Lorain politics last May, so I dont know. I know in May 2008 they were receiving complaints from neighbors about a particular family residing in one of the units. However, as I was at that meeting, I can also tell you the complainants, as well as pretty much everyone else there expressed their concern that affordable housing was diminishing in Ohio City and demolition was not what was being asked for - just to do what they were supposed to do and manage the place.

According to the Cuyahoga County Auditor's office, OCNW sold the property at 2800 Chatham to St. Ignatius High School for $200,000 on Dec. 31st, 2008. The townhouses are at 2800-2812 Chatham Avenue.

Auditor's Transfer Record:

http://auditor.cuyahogacounty.us/repi/transfer.asp?txtParcel=00710113 

This townhouse is just around the corner from where I live. I had a suspicion that it had been vacant for a few weeks. I did not dream that it was going to to be demolished. I was thinking that with a little elbow grease, it could be a wonderful place to live. It had a lovely backyard area that would have been perfect for a co-housing experiment. 

 I hope that St. Ignatius does not turn it into another athletic practice field. Overall St. Ignatius is a good neighbor, but there are issues with parking on that street as well as the lack of density the athletic fields and parking lots create.  

The neighborhood just south of Lorain Avenue is charming and conveniently located near the West Side Market and the Rapid Station.  That land deserves to be residential not for football practice.  

  I am glad that Jenita alludes to the convenient demolition to benefit St. Ignatius School, which recently acquired the Chatham properties.  Now, who paid for the demolition?  Did it come out of St. Ignatius funds or did it come out of federal funds?  See if you can get an answer from your CDC.

There is some subsidized housing in Ohio City that is run by NRP and which, from reports I hear, has not been doing so well. Will this demolition make the low-income housing market less competitive and therefore favor the NRP project? I know that Abe Bruckman has championed their cause in the past, up here in Brooklyn Centre where they're not needed and not wanted, and his prior relationship with them sprang from the failing NRP project in Ohio City.

One thing we have to remember about our secular nonprofits and our government, and the "developers" they work with: They are interested only in making the initial deal, and the results are nothing with which they are concerned or for which they are accountable. "The Deal" is everything. The long-term impact on the community is not within the scope of their planning.

  This wasteful agenda is making me sick...

In NEO, why are we wasting public dollars paying contractors to demolish perfectly good housing?

INSTEAD...Read Architecture2030 proposal here:

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http://www.architecture2030.org/downloads/2030stimulusplan.pdf

AIA GRASSROOTS: A HISTORIC OPPORTUNITY
A PERSONAL PLEA FROM EDWARD MAZRIA

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Next week, architects from across the US will come to the Nation's Capital, the main purpose, to lobby Congress on critical issues. As the country continues to rapidly sink into a deeper recession, this effort presents a historic opportunity to reverse the slide and put the US on a sustainable path to recovery. It may well be the last chance we have.

I am personally asking all AIA State and local delegations and architects attending the Grassroots Leadership and Legislative Conference in Washington, DC to hand-deliver The Two-Year, Nine-Million-Jobs Investment Plan to their Representatives on the Hill with a plea to use $192 billion of the $350 billion TARP money (left over from the last Stimulus) to fund the Plan. If you are not attending, please discuss the Plan with your local representatives and make sure they receive a copy.

The Building Sector is at the center of the recession. It is in a free-fall and dragging every other sector of the US economy down with it. This week alone, Home Depot announced it will layoff 7,000 employees, Caterpillar 20,000, Philips 6,000, Ainsworth Lumber 280, Deere & Co. 700, Corning 3,500, and Black & Decker 1,200 employees. As their tax bases erode, cities and states have announced dramatic layoffs as well; New York City announced 23,000 job cuts today. Addressing the collapse of the Building Sector is critical to stabilizing the US economy.

The Two-Year, Nine-Million-Jobs Investment Plan is so effective because it invests funds directly in the sector that is dragging down the entire economy, i.e. the private building sector. The private building sector represents 93% of total US building stock. It also generates $1 trillion in private investment and spending, which makes the 9 million jobs possible. While we fully support funding for public building sector projects, it accounts for only 7% of total US building stock and, compared to private building, generates comparatively little private investment and spending.

Addressing the foreclosure crisis and the collapse of the private building sector is critical to stabilizing the US economy. The Two-Year, Nine-Million-Jobs Investment Plan addresses both, as well as many other challenges facing the country, including energy independence and climate change. With a single investment, the US can create millions of jobs, strengthen the US economy, reduce energy consumption, and save consumers billions of dollars. Investing in the private building sector is the only investment that can accomplish all of these objectives simultaneously.

Thank you all,

Edward Mazria
Founder & Executive Director
Architecture 2030

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BTW--Mazria is asking for REAL carbon reduction, not this BS:

The Cleveland Carbon Fund was unveiled on Wednesday. Organizers are billing it as "the first community-based, open-access carbon reduction fund in the United States." It provides an way for Northeast Ohio residents and businesses to reduce their carbon footprints by investing in local carbon reduction projects. 

here's a funny story about this building - early one hot summer saturday morning the entire neighborhood woke to the bullhorn preaching of one of the tenants in this building. he switched back and forth from english to spanish and was thoroughly convinced all his neighbors were going to hell unless they found jesus.

the guy was probably in his late 50s early 60s, so i guess everyone  just assumed he wouldnt go for three hours, but he did. finally, someone snapped and started screaming "shut the f&ck up" among other things and one by one neighbors all started yelling at him to be quiet and he went inside.

he never did that again (thank god - you'd be surprised how irritating that can get after 3 hours) but he and his family lived there for a long time. They were very nice. The wife planted flowers out front and he had very beautiful daughters of whom he was very protective.

Since i've moved there, that entire block (of which the rowhouses were the last) has changed from a residential block to a st. ignatious parking lot and practise field. The majority of my neighbors have lived there longer than me. the majority own their homes. as the silver lining on the cloud - most all of us were too poor to get even sub-prime loans, so its pretty stable. except for the disappearing houses. 

and if anyone wants to pay me $150 to install a low-flow showerhead valve, I'll be more than happy to do it.... you dont have to give your money to Cleveland Carbon Fund (their rate as per my calculations)...

  Can you say GREEN WASH ?  Cleveland Carbon Fund is another useless attempt for NEO politicos to camouflage their uselessness.  It's tantamount to putting up a cardboard cut-out for real sustainable behavior and what's worse?--they ask residents to fund the charade.  Shameless.

In this feel good story (How much garbage can one teenager pile up in a week?" about St Ignatius student's wake up to garbage story: ""We're trying to make the invisible visible," said Augie Pacetti, a former theology teacher who works full time with the St. Ignatius Campus Ministry."

Now I have to wonder which saintly St. Ignatius administrator (father? sister?) is hauling this around this week?

It was a lovely structure and now they have turned it into landfill.  Somehow making the visible (low income housing) invisible (demolished) didn't register with the St. Ignatius folks. My dad used to say that many Catholics have a morality double standard. Is this a good example? Many prominent catholics have confused me. Is this where"the right hand giveth and the left hand taketh away"? I'm confused about their mission.

The Society of Jesus proclaims that the service of faith through the promotion of justice is the mission that must be integrated as a priority into each Jesuit work.

Our purpose in education, then, is to form men and women "for others." The Society of Jesus has always sought to imbue students with values that transcend the goals of money, fame and success. We want graduates who will be leaders concerned about society and the world in which they live. We want graduates who desire to eliminate hunger and conflict in the world and who are sensitive to the need for more equitable distribution of the world's goods. We want graduates who seek to end sexual and social discrimination and who are eager to share their faith with others.

In short, we want our graduates to be leaders-in-service. That has been the goal of Jesuit education since the sixteenth century. It remains so today.

- Peter Hans Kolvenbach, S.J.
Superior General of the Society of Jesus

How does removing this structure serve that mission and how does it align with their stated objective in the experiment described: "The idea is for the students to keep all the garbage they generate during the week, just to show how humankind can thoughtlessly heap abuse -- and refuse -- upon the planet."

Once again the Pee Dee only tells part of the story. 

I want to update this, (with permission) OCNW reports they did not have the funds to maintain this building, it needed serious work. The Section 8 rent offers had also been cut way WAY back, so they were hemorrhaging money every month on this building. (8 years of Bush cut-backs previously mentioning here). OCNW was able to work with St. Ignatius to find each of these families another 3 BR apartment or house, provide them $250 in moving expenses, and hand them each a check for $1000 for their trouble. One of our tenants told them that she felt like she just won the lottery when she was presented all this. She even added that she was moving from the apartment anyway. The situation was very regrettable, but they could not find another option, since no one could find a pot of money that would be required to put back into this building.

This makes sense, given the article I referred to yesterday:

"Even as the Bush administration made a show of doling out small increases to the homeless services budget (though never enough to meet the need), it hacked away at public housing, Section 8 vouchers and other housing programs, undermining any attempt at reducing family homelessness. Indeed, since 2004 funding for affordable housing programs has declined by $2.2 billion. The result is a country in which only one in four eligible low-income households receives federal housing assistance while those forced to go it alone, without any government assistance, face an increasingly harsh landscape of rising rents and declining wages. It's no wonder the number of poor renters paying more than half their income for rent rose by more than 1 million households, or 29 percent, between 2001 and 2007."

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090209/markee_ratner