Block Busting Lakewood

[Bill Call]

Part of the development plans for Tremont, Gordon Square and Downtown Cleveland included efforts to relocate halfway houses and homeless shelters to Lakewood. The conversion of Hidden Village apartments to a halfway house resulted in a noticeable increase in crime in the immediate neighborhood.

Those efforts have resulted in a federal lawsuit that is now moving forward.

http://www.cleveland.com/lakewood/index ... ial-report#incart_m-rpt-2

How much can a City take?

The City of Cleveland in partnership with ODOT clear cut areas around Superior to force the homeless from the area:

http://search.cleveland.com/homeless+superior+avenue/

What affect do homeless resettlement plans have on cities?

http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index. ... _econ.html

[Jim O'Bryan]

Bill,

The massive project I walked away from "Greater University Circle" is displacing 57,000
lower income residents to Euclid, Garfield Heights, Lakewood if you believe the Cleveland
Foundation can pull it off.

Hospital city, we get the scraps.

.

[ryan costa]

you've got to tell the CMHA
to send the worst people
back to the east side.

[Jim O'Bryan]

Ryan

I do not think the CMHA has much to do with any of this. Though they often get the job of
"housing" people.

FWIW


.

[Michael Loje]

Bill,
What you are addressing is not a conspiracy. In the case of Hidden Village, it just comes down to this; WILLING LANDLORDS. They just wanted to get their building filled.

[Peter Grossetti]

you've got to tell the CMHA
to send the worst people
back to the east side.

Ryan - I'd love to hear your definition of "the worst people"

[Jerry Ritcey]

Ryan - I'd love to hear your definition of "the worst people"

I vote for the people going 50 MPH down Cook Ave at 2 AM with Skrillex blaring, myself.

[Bill Call]

Bill,
What you are addressing is not a conspiracy. In the case of Hidden Village, it just comes down to this; WILLING LANDLORDS. They just wanted to get their building filled.

I mostly agree. Apartment owners sometimes let their buildings deteriorate to the extent that the units cannot be rented at anywhere near the amount needed to pay the taxes, insurance, utilities and mortgage.

An easy out is to contact a local housing agency like Lutheran ministries and offer to convert the apartment building into a halfway house. In the case of the Bonnieview apartments the owners were able to convert a half empty apartment building under foreclosure into a money machine. That's what makes public agencies culpable in "transforming" neighborhoods.

Where is the conspiracy? Well.. It is common knowledge that the City of Cleveland has a policy to relocate Cleveland's homeless population away from areas that are open to redevelopment. They did so along Euclid, Superior, the Gordon Square area and Tremont.
The question then becomes: Where to put them? Lakewood is an obvious and actually quite sensible answer.

Do those County institutions talked to each other about their business? What do they talk about? Well..... somewhere there is a post of mine that recalls a conversation I overheard at Don's Lighthouse Inn. A diner at the table next to mine was having a very animated conversation with his guest. It turns out the diner was on the board of Mental Health Services. During his conversation he talked about the debate about "relocating" people and the detrimental affect such a policy would have on Lakewood. He said the rest of the board simply didn't care. He said that he asked one of the board members if he would welcome a homeless shelter at "Fox Run". ( Lot's of Fox Runs out their, none in Lakewood.)

That's where I made a rookie error. I went over and identified myself and asked for more information. Needless to say that was the end of THAT conversation. Who knows what else I might have heard.

What I take out of all of those little tidbits is that there is an ongoing program to relocate people to Lakewood, that some well connected Lakewood apartment owners reap a huge financial windfall, that the policy does great damage to the City and that the institutions that implement that policy a aware of the damage and they don't care.

What makes a conspiracy?