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ew Challenges Test the Court
Two decades after its creation, the Court already had become an essential component of the City. But a new
decade for the Housing Court brought new challenges. The Housing Court continued to adapt itself to meet
these challenges with creative and effective solutions.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, vacant properties marred many of Cleveland’s once-vibrant
neighborhoods. Estimates placed between 10,000 to as many as 25,000 vacant and abandoned properties
in Cleveland. Following years of predatory lenders and often unscrupulous companies with no legitimate
paperwork on properties, Cuyahoga County was also at the crossroads of another major obstacle: the
foreclosure crisis, which hit Cleveland early and hard. By 2007, when the rest of the nation was just
beginning to feel the effects of the housing bubble, foreclosures in Cuyahoga County surged past 14,000
a year. Vandals destroyed vacant properties and stripped empty homes of plumbing, heating equipment,
and recyclable materials. Homeowners whose properties were in foreclosure often were dismayed to learn
that though they could not afford their homes, they were still the legal owners of the properties, and thus
responsible for their upkeep.
Responding to this challenge, the National Vacant Properties Campaign and Neighborhood Progress,
Inc. published Cleveland at the Crossroads. This comprehensive report urged greater cooperation among
city leaders, CDCs, and the private sector to identify vacant properties and develop an enforcement and
development strategy. 35 Judge Pianka recognized the need to enforce the City Building and Housing Code,
while simultaneously encouraging the partnership and creative solutions offered by the Crossroads report,
in an essay he wrote for the Northeast Ohio Apartment Association. 35
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