gentrification

obligations to lower income neighbors. In a peculiar twist, then, the little anti-gentrification fervor thatexists in Cleveland is found in Ohio City, led by those who moved into the neighborhood twodecades ago. Tremont, a community just across the Cuyahoga River and anchored by Lincoln Park,is seeing a modest inflow of higher income residents and sports a small but growing art scene.The riot-ravaged Hough neighborhood north of Euclid Avenue between downtown, CaseWestern Reserve University and its surrounding hospital complex is changing slowly, with newresidents drawn by its spacious Victorian housing stock and Beacon Place, a successful newtownhouse development built by Zaremba Cleveland Communities, Inc., an area developer. Whilein other cities university and hospital complexes frequently draw higher income newcomers intosurrounding neighborhoods, sparking gentrification, that does not appear to be the case inCleveland. Observers suggest that African American and white families moving back into the Houghneighborhood generally prefer new infill housing rather than the architecturally significantrehabilitated housing their white counterparts in Ohio City prefer. But longstanding homeownersliving near the new townhouse development are reaping a $20,000 equity increase, according to forprofitand non-profit sources alike. Moreover, Nathan Zaremba says that Cleveland-based Third FedSavings Bank dropped its plans to leave the area. Instead, they proceeded with a $26 millionexpansion of a nearby office building—and the 400-600 new jobs that would be housed there—afterthe Beacon Place project showed that high quality housing near the facility would be available.Zaremba’s marketing surveys and homeowner feedback suggests that those moving into hisnew in-town developments (with units selling for as much as $260,000) are predominantly from theCleveland suburbs, middle- and upper-class young professionals and empty nesters. Some make areverse commute, while most work in the downtown area perhaps three miles away. Seventypercent of Beacon Place’s owners are black while 30 percent are white, he estimates. Mostsurprising to Zaremba are the number of single white working mothers who live in his units; they likethe short commute, close-by shopping, and new construction. “The property tax abatement worksout to be the [private school] tuition subsidy,” he says.3. ConclusionDevelopers, city officials, neighborhood organization leaders and academics all agree thatvirtually no displacement attributable to gentrification has occurred in Cleveland, so technically theresults do not meet our definition of gentrification, which requires some displacement. Somedisplacement may be ramping up as project-based Section 8 development owners opt out of theprogram and raise their rents to market levels. Data documenting gentrification are very hard tocome by, however. The 1980 and 1990 housing, income, education and census data are outdatedand inconclusive, perhaps illustrating how small the gentrification movement is in the Clevelandmarket. To the extent that the numbers of newcomers remain quite small, it is likely that theireffects on the neighborhood are subtle, without noticeable effect, and unlikely to lead to rapidneighborhood change (such as large rent increases) in the near future.63