Oh, but ain't that America
For you and me
Ain't that America
Something to see, baby
Ain't that America
Home of the free, yeah
Little pink houses
For you and me

"Pink Houses" (John Mellencamp - 1983)

We have no pink houses on our block, but there are plenty of empty ones. The house to our north is empty. The house behind us is empty. The house directly across the street is empty. If we had not pushed hard, the house to our south would still be empty as it was for the first six months of this year. For that matter, we have an empty house on our lot, and the house we're living in was empty for at least ten years prior to our arrival in 2011.

Empty houses are in abundant supply in Cleveland. A non-profit called the Western Reserve Land Conservancy did a survey last summer, sending lots of Case Western students up and down every street in Cleveland rating properties. They handed out Ds and Fs to 3,800 houses, all of which are empty. These nearly 4,000 houses do not count the more than 1,500 houses already marked for condemnation by the city. Of the empty houses around us, only the one to our north merited a grade as low as a D, so it's obvious that there are far more than 5,500 empty houses in Cleveland.

The city itself ran out of money trying to demolish abandoned houses fairly early in the Housing Crash. Since then, responsibility for clearing houses that are empty and dangerous has fallen to a non-profit, countywide land bank created by Ohio statute in 2008 and is funded by $41 million from the federal government and by annual appropriations by the state of Ohio ($20 million to date). Not all of this money has gone to tearing down houses. Around $15 million of the federal money went into rehabbing and then distributing 60 houses. Another $2 million went to a new housing development in University Circle, an area already benefiting from the presence of Case Western Reserve University and its related University Hospital, Cleveland Clinic and most of the city's top cultural attractions including the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Botanical Gardens and Severance Hall, the home of the Cleveland Symphony. Only $6.5 million went to demolishing 790 houses. Ohio's money is more narrowly distributed with the $20 million going to demolish more than 1,000 houses.

The vacant house problem is so bad and the funds available so limited that it's very difficult to get the designated authorities to tear down even the worst properties if they're not located in an area marked for new development. We've been working with our local Community Development Corporation (CDC) for two years to get the house to the north foreclosed for $30,000 in delinquent taxes and then demolished. To accomplish that requires the approval of our city councilman and our CDC in addition to the involvement of the county and the land bank. All this time, the building has stood open to all comers with missing doors and windows along with a porch that one good wind off the lake will blow into our front yard. The city has made some efforts to correct those issues, even coming once to board up the property, but the deranged would-be slumlord who bought the place for $600 keeps ripping the plywood off. Finally, after being threatened with jail by the city's housing court, he relented and followed the CDC representative over to the land bank office to sign papers to begin the process of handing the property over to the land bank. The actual demolition is probably a year away.

Why are so many houses empty? There's usually a slumlord and a foreclosure involved. Our lot and houses, the house behind us, the house to our north and the house across the street were all purchased for $10,000 or less by slumlords bidding in foreclosure sales. The owner of our property just strip-mined it, selling the hardwood interior trim of the larger house and leaving it stripped to the studs for more than a decade. During all that time, he did only what was necessary to keep the city's Building Commission off his back. The house to the north was partially re-sided and some new windows were installed, but when the copper plumbing was ripped out during the rehab process, the owner abandoned it and quit paying taxes. The house across the street was occupied when we arrived, but the tenant complained about flaking paint that possibly contained lead. A test revealed that there was lead contamination, and the slumlord lost his Section 8 eligibility. The property has never managed to pass later inspections and remains vacant. The house behind us has been occupied occasionally, but never longer than a few weeks at a time. Its last tenant told me that the problem was a difficult landlord, but we suspect there's also a serious sewer problem. The owner has not appeared there in more than two years, and the city is left to mow his yard several times a summer. The house to the south was occupied by a 50-year resident when we arrived. Just before last Christmas, her children prevailed on her to move to a house near one of her sons in an eastern suburb of Cleveland. The house was empty for six months until we talked them into renting the house's two apartments to C.S.U. friends of our son.

There are other stories for other vacant houses. Three houses to the south, there's a nice two-family that's vacant. Our neighbor told us that the daughter of the family had a gambling problem, and that the elderly parents took out a equity loan to repay some of her debts. They defaulted, the bank never took title, the parents died and the house sits in title limbo with no one paying taxes and no one maintaining it. The family's furniture is still in the house. A neighbor family across the street, who always kept their property in pristine condition, left shortly after the gunfight that occurred on the street between our houses last February. The title remains in their name, but a slumlord has converted the house to two apartments. The yard hasn't been mowed nor the hedge trimmed since the slumlord took possession, but the house is occupied.

The CDCs, the city and the new land bank do what they can, but the problem is too big even for a $60 million solution. It may even be the case that houses are still becoming vacant at a rate faster than they can be torn down in the city of Cleveland. As bad as the problem is in our neighborhood, it's nothing like East Cleveland or Glenville to our east. And don't think that the suburbs are immune. There are 1,500 vacant houses in the town of Warren, Ohio to our south. This is the wreckage from the Housing Crash that has never been cleared or fixed.

Over the next few weeks in Saturday morning Open Thread, I'll be exploring what kinds of solutions are being tried and what the results have been. We'll also take a look at some less conventional approaches that could have a positive impact.

Here's your Saturday morning meditation video, a ride along an electrified European railway (in Bavaria?) on a snowy day accompanied by Brubeck's "Bluette."
[video:https://youtu.be/xX6CRLt6CLE]