Knock 'em all down, let God sort 'em out
Cleveland tore down an empty century home on the city's East Side last month after a bank spent more than $19,000 to fix it up.On the near West Side, a crew last May knocked down an empty two-family house after Councilman Brian Cummins e-mailed the Building Department asking that it be taken off the wrecking list. A prospective buyer had already fixed the garage and rewired the house.
In June, a crew demolished a Revere Avenue house that the Union Miles Development Corp. and another nonprofit development group, Neighborhood Progress Inc. wanted to renovate.
Frank Ford of Neighborhood Progress said the nonprofit persuaded the lender that owned the property to drop the price from $49,000 to less than $10,000.
Before the deal could go through, the house vanished.
Yep, gotta destroy blight. That's the ticket.
Who would move into a city with such a cavalier disregard for property rights?
Comments
Posted by: Ben C
Posted on: October 2, 2007 10:03 AM
Jeff,
Did you even read the article? The Wells Fargo case is not a property rights issue like the bogus blight case in Lakewood for the West End Project a couple years back. This is a series of unfortunate brain farts, (pooched paperwork, a person with the city not having the common sense to double check). By all means criticize the city workers for being idiots, but as a Cleveland resident and property owner I am mostly for the bulldozers.
What about my property rights as someone who keeps a well maintained home? This is not the countryside where our nearest neighbors are a half mile away. Your right to keep a litter covered boarded up eyesore ends when it starts effecting my already perilous property value. The longer I live in the city, the more I think the People's Republic of Cleveland Heights may be on to something with their onerous code violation policies.
Let's save the righteous indignation for the cases that are worthy of it.
Cheers,
Ben
Posted by: Jeffrey Quick
Posted on: October 2, 2007 11:35 AM
Yes, I read it, and yes, "brain farts" is the best description of this. But the rush to fund knockdowns is the pot of undercooked beans behind the brain farts. And behind that rush is the belief that you have the right to increase or even maintain your property value at the expense of your neighbor.
I live in the country. My nearest neighbor is about 100 feet away. She lives in a dilapidated old trailer, with junk in her yard and a 5 acre sea of multiflora rose behind her. She was there when I bought the place, and I have her to thank for keeping my taxes low. Sure, if we ever buy her out, we'll burn the place down. And since we've moved in, she's been keeping the yard up better. But she's not a problem. Abandoned might be more of a problem, but if we indeed have housing that nobody is laying claim to, why are the homeless sleeping on grates? And if there is an owner, why aren't they being made to keep their housing non-dangerous?
My Cleveland addresses have included E. 97th and Lamont (1986), W. 7th (1987, before it got trendy) W. 43rd a block from Jefferson Middle school (1991, the worst neighborhood), W. 101st and Detroit (1996-9), and Crossburn Ave. (W. 130 and Brookpark, where I bought a house, 1999-2004). So I'm not some country boy ignorant of the problem. While this is nowheres near as egregious as the Lakewood case, it is still a property rights issue, in its fundamentals. And principle is always worth getting excited over.
Posted by: jeffrey smith
Posted on: October 2, 2007 11:13 PM
But these aren't even blighted properties. They were in the process of renovation. And even if they weren't, why should the city knock down my house? I might be in the process of seeking a buyer or financing for renovation--or planning to convert to upscale condos for all they know. Or I may be holding the property until the real estate market turns upward again. It's not their call.
In Miami, we've just had a reverse case, so to speak. The local redevelopment authority bought a rundown boarding house in Overtown (the part of Miami that's been a black section of town ever since Miami had enough blacks to have a black section), and renovated it for over a million bucks, with plans to do whatever bureaucrats fantasize with such properties. The County Commission, which funds the redevelopment authority, has now ordered them to use the place as their office (the building is rather small, btw) because the million-plus can't be justified any other way.