Cleveland Housing Court

Their concerns were valid — Cleveland’s municipal court system
lacked an efficient way to adjudicate code violations cases. Violations
sometimes languished for years before offenders were brought to
court. As no separate division existed for housing cases, judges
rotated through the housing docket, each spending two weeks hearing
cases. Frequently, the judges, with few resources to which to refer
parties, continued the cases, which then became the problem of the next
session’s judge.
Meager fines failed to deter offenders, and only reinforced
the inferior status of housing cases. A 1966 study found that housing fines
were on average less than $15.00. 20 Not only did this process often result
in delay, but it permitted serial offenders to hide in plain sight without
ever facing elevated penalties. And as cases languished, the problems
and the decay in Cleveland’s neighborhoods only got worse. A 1967
study published by the Plan of Action for Tomorrow’s Housing (PATH)
described Cleveland as in a “housing crisis,” with an “ever-widening,
rotting and impoverished core, surrounded by an affluent and unconcerned
. . . ring of suburbs.” 21
These problems further precipitated calls for a housing court in Cleveland.
By the 1970s, Baltimore’s housing court was not the only one in the
nation. Specialized courts for housing had also taken root in other cities
such as Pittsburgh, Boston, and New York. The campaign for a Cleveland
Housing Court took on new political viability when Oberlin College
student and City Councilman James Rokakis wrote a paper on the idea.
Rokakis advocated for a housing court in Cleveland, and
enlisted the support of State Senator Charles L. Butts, who
sponsored the bill in the General Assembly to create such a
court 22, and Terence Copeland to help him lead the effort.
“Cleveland at that time was a divided city,” Copeland recalls, “and it
was rare for councilmen on the east and west sides of town to partner on
anything. But both sides of town had dilapidated housing,” he says. “We
thought it would be good for Cleveland to have this Court to address the
problem. We worked as a team, speaking at various meetings across the
city talking about Housing Court. We made it our goal to let everyone
know it was needed on both sides of town, and enlisted the support of
about 20 neighborhood leaders and housing advocates to help us.”
Despite Rokakis’s advocacy and Butts’s support, the housing court
proposal was met with vocal opposition, particularly from the judiciary.
The Chief Administrative Judge of the Cleveland Municipal Court, Edward
F. Katalinas, opposed the bill, telling the Cleveland Plain Dealer that
“[if] you put one judge on housing full time, he wouldn’t know what to do
with himself…we have less than one case per day filed for the entire city
of Cleveland on the housing code.” 23 Then-Governor James Rhodes also
disapproved of the idea.
But the chorus in favor of a housing court was louder. Almost as one voice,
community groups, neighborhood activists and many lawyers, politicians
and judges urged the creation of a specialized court in Cleveland to address
the City’s many housing-related challenges and the growing number of
housing-related disputes. 24 They recognized, even before its creation, that
the Court would need to take a unique approach: seeking compliance,
rather than simply imposing fines.
On November 30, 1979, the Ohio General Assembly passed a bill authored
by Harry J. Lehman of Beachwood, paving the way for the bill to become
law on January 1, 1980. 25 Though advocates feared a veto, Rokakis was
able to convince then-Mayor George Voinovich to persuade Rhodes to
allow the bill to become law without his signature, and the housing court
became a reality. 26 The Court’s creation “was viewed as both an important
urban reform and a grassroots advocacy victory,” said Robert Jaquay,
associate director of the George Gund Foundation and a Housing Court
prosecutor in the early 1980s. 27
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