By: Nora McKeown
CLEVELAND — Longtime homeowners in Cuyahoga County’s Circle East District could be eligible to get grant funding for home renovations and maintenance from the land bank.
“So our strategy from the very beginning is in a community like this that has not experienced positive equity, how can we go about giving the people who live here an opportunity to build wealth through the creation of equity in their home,” Dennis Roberts, real estate development director at the Cuyahoga Land Bank, said.
In 2009, the county created the land bank to acquire and repurpose vacant, abandoned or underutilized properties to reduce blight.
Now, the organization is also working to help longtime homeowners, like Mary Jennings, build equity by covering the cost of renovation and maintenance projects.
Jennings has owned an East Cleveland home with a beautiful open porch since the 90s, it wasn’t until recently that she felt safe spending time outside.
“I have seen many things happen around here, so I was kinda scared. And I stayed in my house. I didn’t ever come out,” she said.
She said in recent years, the people causing problems on her street have moved away — or died. And, the Cuyahoga Land Bank has started demolishing blighted properties where those people used to hang out.
“Now, it’s peace around here because so many people have moved, their houses have been torn down, and a lot of people’s not around here no more,” Jennings said.
Those demolitions are part of a larger project to invest in and revitalize the neighborhood, where the land bank plans to build 12 townhomes and 22 market rate single-family homes.
Roberts said they’re also going door-to-door offering grants to long-time homeowners in the mostly Black, 30-acre district for home improvements and renovations.
The neighborhood has faced a long history of discriminatory housing practices and disinvestment from local governments, which still has an effect today. Roberts said the land bank is working to stabilize the housing market by offering these home repairs and subsidizing the cost of new builds.
“If the cost, let’s say, for example, $300,000 to build the home and we can only sell it for $250,000, we are then taking that money from Cuyahoga County,” Roberts said. “Using that to subsidize the building of that home.”
Jennings is one of 10 residents who has been rewarded a grant to get her home renovated.
The Land Bank contracted, managed and paid for workers to replace her siding and gutters and fix her porch. She said these are projects she otherwise couldn’t have afforded.
“My house was peeling and looked bad and everything,” she said. “Som I was ashamed of my house until they put aluminum siding.”
Now, Jennings said, things are different. While there is still work that needs to be done on her home, she feels proud.
“Since everything’s been done on my house, it makes it look much better,” Jennings said. “And it make me feel good. Because a lot of people come by and they look, you know, be looking at my house and everything.”
The Land Bank said they averaged $19,000 per home renovation for this round of grants, which they sourced from various organizations throughout the state.
An additional $1,000,000 will be used for projects on other owner-occupied homes in the neighborhood.
