I read with some dismay that the Cuyahoga County Government and the Cuyahoga County Land Bank want to move away from demolition to rehabilitation. The article states that there are 18,000 vacant homes in the county and that the Land Bank has demolished 7,000 since 2009. That seems to imply plenty of work yet to be done. I have several Land Bank properties in my neighborhood, Slavic Village, and they cannot remove them fast enough for my tastes. Most are beyond salvaging.
Diverting any funds to rehabilitation is a misuse of public money. The County cannot run its jails properly, but they have money to go into the rehab business? If the rehabilitations were economically viable, why aren’t more properties being purchased from the Land Bank by individuals motivated by profit? The Land Bank has a website full of them, which is not something new. This appears to be a classic example of governmental overreach. Maybe the motivation isn’t so much residential preservation as job preservation for those running the Land Bank?