gentrification

nationwide. 99 In contrast to many of its cohort, however, job growth is positive in both the city andsuburbs—job creation grew 4.5 percent in the city and 8.4 percent in the suburbs between 1993 and1996. 100 Small businesses barely hang on along most of the city’s main thoroughfares, and the lowincomes of city residents pump little revenue to them.Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Cleveland’s thousands of working class clapboard homessuffered from deferred maintenance and many were lost from the housing stock in the last quartercentury. Even today houses in the city’s strong and vibrant communities including Glenville,Tremont, Ohio City, and Fairfax are mixed in with thousands of empty lots. 101 In the slowlyrevitalizing neighborhoods of Hough, Tremont and Ohio City, more than 15 percent of the units werevacant in the 1980 and 1990 censuses. 102 Mixed in are sprinklings of recently built homes that lookas if they were plucked from the suburbs and dropped into traditional urban neighborhoods.2. Current Development Efforts Aim to Attract New ResidentsMayor Michael White, in office for the past ten years, grew up in Cleveland and is focused onits neighborhoods. Mayor White concentrates on the basics: neighborhood investments, job savingsand expansion, downtown and neighborhood commercial redevelopment, crime reduction and publicschool improvement.Neighborhood Revitalization. Mayor White continued the redevelopment of the downtowncinema district, converting a series of large dilapidated cinemas from the first half of the century intoarts and meeting spaces. He ramped up the city’s land bank, taking in tax delinquent property,razing burnt out shells, and recycling them back into productive use. The arson rate declinedsignificantly, from 1,000 units burned in 1990 to just over 400 in 1998, as the city stepped up codeenforcement and demolished many high-risk units, and non-profits targeted their resources to thesedangerous eyesores. 103 Small business improvements have proceeded more slowly, and there is noindication that gentrification is producing any hardships for businesses located in the revitalizingneighborhoods.Attracting New Residents. The city is aggressively trying to lure new residents. The lowcost of land is generally matched by aggressive tax abatements offered for new construction andrehabilitation of housing in the city. Through the ‘90s, the city permitted nearly 2,000 new housingunits (virtually all of them subsidized with free land and tax abatements), compared to 375 during theentire ‘80s. 104 This has included market-rate subdivisions and affordable rental and homeownershiphousing built by Cleveland’s sophisticated network of non-profit housing developers. Nevertheless,99 Brennan and Hill, Table 6, p. 9.100 Brennan and Hill, Table 3, p. 6.101 There are about 4600 lots in the city’s land bank program.102 Center on Urban Poverty and Social Change, MSASS, Case Western Reserve University (“CANDO”).Retrieved from the World Wide Web in March, 2000: http://povertycenter.cwru.edu.103 City of Cleveland, Cleveland’s Neighborhoods in the 1990s . . ., May, 1999, p. 3.104 Office of Mayor Michael R. White, Living in Cleveland Center, Fannie Mae Foundation and ClevelandCavaliers Team up for the 8 th Annual Buying into Cleveland Home Show 2000 on April 8. News Release,January 7 th , 2000, p. 1.61