TAX ABATEMENT /PUBLIC INVESTMENT IN NEW HOUSING WHILE DEMOLISHING TAXPAYER’S HOMES

“Battery Park” is a multi square block development on West 72 south of  the CSX tracks just on the bluff above Edgewater park and the Shoreway.

Right next to Battery Park is the old Detroit neighborhood where there are numerous vacant houses.

While CCP crews leisurely  install new underground street light wiring on the new streets in front of empty lots on which the private developer is scheduled to build additional phases of housing, the numerous homes of the legacy taxpaying neighbor’s next door are being lost to foreclosure, abandonment, vacancy, and lack of maintenance. 

There’s also a little grassy “park” in the middle of the yet-un-built on blocks - and I’ll bet the City of Cleveland mows the lawn. 

So while the taxpayer is providing 15 year tax abatement to the developer, and CCPower is spending ratepayers money to build out the street light infrastructure,  the very citizens that have lived in the area for decades are having a very hard time…while, presumably,  the private developer is making money - and we can be certain that Keybank isn’t giving away the store.

The CCP crew fella’s told me that mostly Cleveland Clinic employees were buying the new homes, and that the developer was only building them as sales commitments where obtained. 

Rather than using the existing taxpayers’ to support the developer’s profitability, wouldn’t it make more sense and certainly be more equitable if the subsidy were provided to the citizens who already live there and have been the ones who have paid taxes and will continue to pay taxes?

Seems to me we’ve got the subsidies radically upside down.  The citizens who have loyally paid  for the past years to build their community should not be subsidizing private developers to build non-taxed new housing while the existing community is on hard times.