Just a reminder to keep this date posted---
 

Oh my Laura, would you please keep poking us about this date.  I surely want to get my two cents in on this one. 

Please read:

http://www.cleveland.com/cityhall/index.ssf/2009/10/mayor_frank_jackson_seeks_citi.html

http://media.cleveland.com/cityhall_impact/other/City%20Council%20block%20grant%20allocations.pdf 

http://www.hud.gov/offices/cpd/about/budget/budget09/

What constitutes NDA allocations???  Your tax dollar!

See also:

http://www.vacantproperties.org/resources/documents/CityofClevelandCodeEnforcementPartnership.pdf

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2009/10/cuyahoga_county_government_ove.html

SEE especially--

http://www.city.cleveland.oh.us/clnd_images/mayor/initiatives/5yearCIP.pdf

There are many long overdue street repairs in this document and long overdue maintenance and upkeep issues addressed. There are investments in bike ways and the towpath and there is a notable dedication of $4 million in funds to build a "LEED" rec center in Collinwood, but no mention of major repair work at any west side rec centers--there is money for greenspace development at Zone rec center, however, for the record--the east side has double the number of rec centers found on the west side and all of the facilities are falling apart.  Estabrook especially needs a new roof.  Should the City of Cleveland be building a new rec center, when the existing centers are so poorly maintained?

Also, close to $15 million is dedicated to demolition in the 2009 and 2010, but no explanation of how to manage the demo debris and how it will be disposed, not to mention the considerable red flags raised by demolition contracting under the FBI-watched Building and Housing department. 

Overall--the Jackson five year plan provides some hopeful investment in the community, but don't sit back and settle for the same old.  Please READ and SPEAK out. Demand ACCOUNTABILITY.

I guess we will all have to go in person when speaking as I think all our leaders are deaf. 

I suggest the city stop spending money on studies and start doing the actual work that needs to be done.  Isn't there someone that is paid to keep track of what is needed?  Why spend money for so many studies while little work is actually getting done.  For example, the noise barrier studies.  How many dollars were spent studying the problem only for the suggestions to be trashed in the long term?  Some people are making lots of money doing studies, while the people that actually live in the areas that need the work do without.  Nice job if you can get it!

Presented in the five-year plan...L-GO funding equals General Obligation bonds.  This was formulated before the ward merger...is this still how funding will be disbursed?

An outrageous sum of money is dedicated to planning....

Residents in Old Brooklyn-Brooklyn Centre must qualify for HUD Community Development Block Grant funds to help balance the development of high end real estate "hot spots" like Tremont and Detroit  Shoreway.  There is a need to balance the population -just enough -to qualify for the federal dollars, handed out based on the percentage of low-income residents.

Hence, what I like to call the HUD Funding game.  In Northeast Ohio, the quasi-governmental agencies that receive this HUD funding, "neighborhood" community development corporations, must draw their service boundaries to encompass what I will refer to as the "poverty factor."   The umbrella agency that provides "guidance" to Northeast Ohio CDCs is a merger of several non-profits - the CNDC (Colleen Gilson), the Living in Cleveland Center (Jeff Kipp) and Neighborhood Progress (Joel Ratner).

If anyone has read my blog posts here at REALNEO - you will know that I have an inherent distrust for the operations of CDCs, based on my personal experience living and working in the Tremont neighborhood in the the nineties.  I contend that the creation of the "land bank " --a concept which in Northeast Ohio was hatched by Gus Frangos and Jim Rokakis, while they were city council reps, respectively serving Downtown-Tremont-Ohio City and Old Brooklyn-Brooklyn Centre -- is the reason we see the never-ending cycle of demolition, arsons and depreciated real estate, especially on the near west side.  The flipping "magic" as I will call it - never quite caught on the east side in Slavic Village - where the duo (Rokakis-Frangos) made promises to their friends who invested there.  But, it did open up the wide, wide, wide world of "demos for developers" - guaranteeing a far more lucrative cash flow than "development fees"  (aka kickbacks) through council controlled CDCs.

Fast forward to December 2015 - a Ph.D. student from Canada called me to discuss my take on "land banks" - he also contacted "Thieving Communities" and the Scene magazine.   I posted the following comment to the article release - it did not pass the censors, so I am reproducing here:

I am grateful that the schemes in Northeast Ohio are being shared on a world stage. The complexities of housing and real estate speculation are impossible to understand without a full timeline of HUD funded community development corporations(CDC). Once intended to help provide affordable housing - these quasi-governmental agencies (the "Land Bank is Cuyahoga Land Reutilization Corp - a CDC) now skim development fees after transferring vacant properties to developers. I can provide a local example: Detroit Shoreway Development Corp picks up a property from the "land bank" *(20K lien tax cleansed) - sells it to a developer for $15,000 (pure profit) - that developer invests $60,000 and it is listed now on the market for $275,000. Do I hate this flipping and the developer? No. But how does this encourage affordable housing? It doesn't. The same CDC - has to justify it's existence in terms of low-income housing so in "partnership" with another non-profit - Cleveland Housing Network - in the same HUD service area - secretly negotiates transfer of a large commercial property to CHN for permanent supportive housing. Lots of potential for "fees" and contract steering to Marous Bros.***

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2016/02/03/the-practice-of-demolishing-abandoned-houses-in-cleveland-ohio-is-limited-in-its-capacity-to-address-underlying-causes-of-housing-injustice/

 ***

http://www.cleveland.com/countyincrisis/index.ssf/2010/09/the_cuyahoga_county_corruption.html