The small single family home at 6644 Boston Ave on the outskirts of Cleveland's Slavic Village neighborhood stood for 87 years. For the last three years, its been boarded up and abandoned. It only took 20 minutes for a backhoe to flatten it.
Damian Borkowski: It's amazing how little resistance a house offers to a backhoe.
Department of Building and Housing's Damian Borkowski says Cleveland has sped up demolitions - moving from a virtual standstill in 2006 to over 150 so far this year. Rick Bias watches with satisfaction as the home next to his splinters and cracks. He says he's six abandoned homes come down in this neighborhood over the last three weeks.
Rick Bias: There was a house right there between the red and the blue one, it's not there no more. There was one around the corner - it's gone in the last two weeks. Its good to get rid of these, their problem houses and this is getting to be a nicer neighborhood.
That's exactly the reasoning behind Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson's plan to demolish 700 dangerous properties this year. The Mayor also wants to rehab hundreds of others. The fuel comes from a $6 million bond, earmarked for demolition and blight removal. Cleveland City Councilman Jay Westbrook applauds the demolition blitz, but worries about the agency required to oversee it, the Department of Building and Housing. He says it's a complete mess.
Jay Westbrook: It's a level of collapse, a level of dysfunction that's been a long time occurring.
An assessment of building and housing done by the consultancy group Lean Firm was released last fall. The report described a culture where some housing inspectors never wrote tickets, many wouldn't use palm pilots meant to improve accountability and where over half of housing violation notices for the previous three years were never resolved. The report says inspectors complained of lack of training on the new equipment. Jackson's Chief of Staff Ken Silliman says change is underway.
Ken Silliman: They are shifting the whole focus on the department from just responding to complaints as they come in on the phone to a more strategic approach - yes, you get the complaints but you sort them out in terms of priorities and then you deal more strategically with the problems.
Its building and housing inspectors that do the groundwork for identifying and condemning the city's worst homes, but the amount of work they've been doing has been on a dramatic decline. The Lean Firm report found the number of cases inspectors filed in Housing Court dropped 38% between 2003 and 2005. City Law director Robert Triozzi says he's working to improve the system.
Robert Triozzi: We're asking the right questions and we've streamlined the processes - it's a lot of heavy lifting, but we're up to the task.
But housing advocates aren't so sure. Councilman Westbrook says the backlog of abandoned homes left from decades of population loss in the city is overwhelming. Then he points to Cleveland's skyrocketing foreclosure rates, and worries about more Clevelanders leaving their homes as their loans go bad.
Jay Westbrook: It will take time to be fully functional and while at the same time our neighborhoods can't wait.
For now, city officials are starting off with the worst buildings on their list. They're also ramping up inspections at 1,000 abandoned properties they've identified near public schools. Resident Rick Bias welcomes the start. He sits on a park bench across the street from his home and points to newly razed lots nearby.
Rick Bias: For the first time in years I can say I'm proud to say I live in Cleveland again. I didn't use to say that often.
I'm Mhari Saito, 90.3.