ROLDO: Cleveland is Disappearing, Bit By Bit

By Roldo Bartimole

Cleveland is disappearing, bit by bit.

It’s like a slow motion hurricane. Or a tornado that takes its time. Slow. Not like a fire that devastates a place quickly. It’s a slow death. Death nevertheless.

In my days with the Plain Dealer back in the late 1960s I was often assigned to do articles on Cleveland’s growing poverty neighborhoods. The pieces were full-page exams labeled “The Changing City.”

Urban renewal – the Renaissance hope of those days – crushed many neighborhoods by causing movement then overcrowding. Cut up houses, apartment. No more giving care. Just taking as much revenue as an owner could. Grab while you can.

The city has changed. It’s often a sad, sad place. You can literally see at points the city shrinking. Falling apart. Dying.

The housing, particularly in Hough, became stressed in the 1960s. Riots were reactions to bad conditions. It was not changing for the better. Just the mention of urban renewal triggered disinvestment in the housing. Much of the close east side was badly damaged. Now, however, you see some large new homes in Hough taking space where three or more units existed.

(Those who see revival in Tremont, Ohio City, Gordon Square don’t know it but they can give credit to a former downtown councilman. The late Al Grisanti, a lawyer, was the great foe of urban renewal. I credit him with stopping it at the west side of the Cuyahoga River. His motto, which was partially successful, was “Let’s organize the confusion.” There was no major urban renewal destruction west of the river, thus leaving way for improvements hailed today.)

This week, about 50 years later, I went on a guided tour of some of these same Cleveland neighborhoods. I asked to see where the problems were, where the bad housing required land banking. However, if you’re knocking down housing that can’t be good.

What I saw for the most part was deeply depressing. And often hopeless.

The poverty of the people dictates it won’t change.

Cleveland, where the people mostly live, is tired. It just looks worn out. The housing if often sadly neglected. If the poverty and job figures tell anything it is that hope is far, far away. No cavalry is on the way. The people obviously do not have the resources to renew so much bad housing.

“Pray for Cleveland” used to be a cry back in the 1970s. Well, Cleveland still needs some outside help. Not so much spiritual as economic.

Back then taking down houses usually was a matter arson and insurance. Now it’s an official government business.

The Cuyahoga County land bank has taken down nearly 2,000 housing units. It has rehabilitated some 750 housing structures. It really started acquiring properties in 2009. Those figures don’t count what the city of Cleveland is knocking down. The city had demolished more than 4,500 structures (likely not all homes) since 2008.

But here’s the shocker. The 2010 Postal Census says Cleveland has slightly more than 40,000 vacant housing units.

So, yes, Cleveland is DISAPPEARING.

As you ride the streets of Saint Clair-Superior, the infamous Imperial-Gay, and E. 112/E. 130th streets neighborhood, and another east and one west side neighborhood, you see streets where once house stood beside house. A neighborhood.

Now you see empty spots. Where houses once stood. Like missing teeth in a mouth not seen for years by a dentist. You also see boarded up housing awaiting a wrecking ball. (And some houses with well-cared for lawns, rich with flowers and shrubs that stand out because they are exceptions.) I also notice that the empty lots are surprisingly well-kept. No high growth. No rubber car tires. No junk.

All this isn’t new for Cleveland, not all the fault of foreclosures either.

The city has been disappearing for some time. I wrote back in September of 1990 that the U. S. Census Bureau did Republican Mayor George Voinovich a favor. It set the city’s population at 500,526. If it had been 527 fewer, the mayor would have had to explain how the city dropped below the 500,000 on his watch. Now 300,000 would be the embarrassing marker. Are we headed there?

That Census data also noted that Cleveland was shriveling. It cited 24,609 vacant units of housing, up from 21,119 in 1980 and a whopping 56 percent jump since 1970 when there were 15,773.

Despite arson, foreclosures and land banking, we’ve been shrinking. There’s little evidence it will stop.

As we drove about we saw more houses and complexes that would get the wrecking ball with time and much more money to do the job.

What’s the result of this civic poverty? There’s evidence we know. It’s not pretty.

The Plain Dealer articles by Leila Atassi and Rachel Dissell on the mishandled rape cases by Cleveland police tell a devastating part of the story. The tragedy of the three women held captive more than a decade on one of these streets by a Cleveland school bus driver Ariel Castro testifies to something deeply wrong here. And the Imperial Avenue murders of 11 women by Anthony Sowell, long undetected kidnapper of women, suggests the sluggish nature of the city’s police force. The fury of the 137 bullet police chase of a backfiring vehicle in a Bonnie/Clyde type annihilation suggests something inherently wrong.

It should be deeply worrisome.

Something has been wrong with the nature and content of city leadership for a long, long time. It has not paid attention to its constituent needs. Its attention is toward flash. Where its help is less needed.

Yes, other cities have similar crimes. But Cleveland’s lack of concern for the important civic care required attests to a failure of epic proportions. How that long parade of police cars lighting up the night and caught on tape, ending with 137 bullets fired, hasn’t attracted more national television attention befuddles me.

So they can have all the parades they want about young, adventuresome people moving downtown. All the PD editorials about downtown. But if the rot continues outside those boundaries, Cleveland will continue to fester and the decay will spread to the suburbs. Where else is there to go?

The ride revealed too many sad results of decay, decline and indifference to the plight of so many people.

Well, we know it’s about money. Who has it and who doesn’t.

One of the bright spots I saw was the work of Third Federal bank.

Yes, a bank. A bank that has invested in its neighborhood. Built its new headquarters there instead of moving to greener parts. With visible investment in of Slavic Village, hit hard by foreclosures, Third Federal has financed some new housing. Even a $4 million stadium with some public and private help. Maybe because of its start during the Great Depression by the Stefanski family it has remained true to its roots. Too many haven’t.

Maybe Positively Cleveland could sponsor a tour bus of the city’s neighborhood with the aim of finding an answer to what we would have to hide if we had a political convention or similar event.

Maybe. But don’t bet on it.

In 1991 he was awarded the Second Annual Joe Callaway Award for Civic Courage in Washington, D.C. He received the Distinguished Service Award of the Society of Professional Journalists, Cleveland chapter, in 2002, and was named to the Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame, 2004. [Photo by Todd Bartimole.]

 

 

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