kpete (44,320 posts)
Cleveland’s plan to fight blight? Demolish 6,000 homes Lots being redeveloped as parks, greenhouses
Cleveland’s plan to fight blight? Demolish 6,000 homes
Lots being redeveloped as parks, greenhouses
The city of Cleveland is undertaking an interesting plan to fight urban blight, crime and falling home prices.
Instead of attempting to rebuild foreclosed and abandoned homes in blighted neighborhoods, the city is demolishing them and turning the empty lots into parks, greenhouses, and in one case, a vineyard.
All in all, the city plans to demolish 6,000 foreclosed and abandoned homes, according to a report from CNN Money.
From the CNN Money report:
"For the larger body -- the neighborhood -- to survive, you have to remove those cancer cells," said Frank Ford, a policy adviser for the nonprofit Thriving Communities Institute of Cleveland.
During the housing bust, Ford worked at a community redevelopment group that renovated 50 foreclosed homes in Cleveland for $180,000 each. They sold the rehabbed homes for about $90,000 apiece; taking a $90,000 hit on each.
If they had spent that money to demolish nine or 10 foreclosed homes instead and turned the land into green space, it would have had an immediate beneficial impact, said Ford.
That’s just what the city is now doing. And it’s finding the program successful as well.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025824615#post4So dying city Cleveland is going literally to seed. That's fine; all Dem havens die at some point, it's just that not all of them get saved by a Giuliani.
But MineralMan, the poor, stupid old bastard:
Star Member MineralMan (68,735 posts)
4. This quote bothers me:
During the housing bust, Ford worked at a community redevelopment group that renovated 50 foreclosed homes in Cleveland for $180,000 each. They sold the rehabbed homes for about $90,000 apiece; taking a $90,000 hit on each.
$180,000 to rehab a home? Really? Tear it down and build a new one. That would be cheaper. If a home needs $180,000 in rehab work, it's not worth rehabbing. This smacks of people making very bad decisions, indeed.
Oh, MineralMan, you poor, forgetful moron. Cleveland, like Chicago, is infested with an unholy combination of
fleas, maggots, lice, rats, and roaches Dem machine apparatchiks,
"community organizers" a la Barack 0loser, union monkeys, mob thugs, and crooked preachers. Not one shovel gets turned in a place like that without all of them getting duked. THAT'S
why it costs $180K to do a $20K job. That, not coincidentally, is why Detroit and Cleveland are dead.
And that's how you and your merry band of DUmmy dipshits think the whole world should be run. Wow.
