Between 2000 and 2008, large metropolitan areas saw their suburban poverty rates grow at twice the rate of inner cities, according to a new report by the Brookings Institution.
For example, in 2008, 23 percent more people were living in poverty outside the city of Cleveland’s borders than inside it. That’s a 44 percent jump since 2000, for a total of 9 percent of the suburban population. Meanwhile the number of poor in the city of Cleveland decreased, WCPN Ideastream reports.
Similar trends were reported in Akron and Youngstown.
Also of note:
-Social service …

Author Alyssa Katz called on concerned individuals to play an active role in shaping new federal policies toward homeownership in a speech today at Cleveland State University’s Levin College of Urban Affairs.

Katz, author of Our Lot: How Real Estate Came to Own Us, spoke as part of the CSU’s ongoing “Building Our Future Beyond Foreclosure” speaker series.
“History has handed this country and all of us this great tragedy and this great opportunity,” Katz said. “In the throes of this national trauma, the idea of community development really has to go …

As many young adults do, I recently took upon the endeavor of buying my very first home. I began my search after many years (almost ten) of renting apartment after apartment, and then renting an entire house. I always enjoyed the freedom that comes with renting. An apartment felt like an over extended stay in a hotel room, it really wasn’t my place to begin with, I just stayed there for a while-I can leave anytime I want, or that is, when my lease ends. After some time, I started to see and hear the value of ownership from friends who became proud home owners.

I began my search in Youngstown, focusing on both the North and south sides of the city.

A John Carroll University senior in Cleveland is using the city’s surplus of inexpensive housing and a $40,000 grant to house the homeless.
Brian Mauk began the Metanoia Project (from a Greek term for a drastic change in one’s life) last year to rehab foreclosed and abandoned homes for the area’s homeless.
Homeless people are recruited from the streets of Cleveland to take part in the project. Those who are matched with a home are expected to help out by working on other rehab projects.
Check out this video from WKYC:

Detroit Public Radio is praising the Cleveland nonprofit community for pulling together in the name of rehab, demolition and prevention.
First, there’s Neighborhood Progress Inc., drawing on $6 million budget to rehabilitate homes, two-thirds of which is private money.
Then, there’s Case Western Reserve University’s Center on Urban Poverty and Community Development, which has compiled a database of homes in the city which shows which are vacant and which have high-cost loans.
Finally, ESOP (East Side Organizing Project) goes door to door offering troubled homeowners assistance. Their success rate: 80%.
Apparently, the foreclosure crisis …

By now, we’ve all seen these. Half-finished condominum complexes, shopping centers, homes, abandoned and left vulnerable to the elements.
The New York Times has catalogued some striking examples in a slide show called The Ruins of a Second Guilded Age.
“The sudden shift in the economy has unmasked such excess,” said photographer Edgar Martins.
Says Michael Olivares, a 30-year-0ld accountant who bought his Bakersfield Calfornia home for $410,000 in 2006, “We get a lot of tumbleweeds rolling through.”
Nine homes on his street have been foreclosed on this year.

Columbus’s downtown condo market is (of course) suffering under the current housing bust, Columbus’ alt-weekly, The Other Paper, reports.
This is worrisome because the city had vested its hopes for revitalizing downtown on a influx of residential young professionals.
Condo sales account for 2 percent less of overall sales than they did before the bust and many new downtown condo developments are half empty, the paper reports.
This must be happening elsewhere. What will the timing of the economic downturn mean for this relatively new, and once-hot real estate market?

Photographer Bruce Gilden shines a light on the situation in Detroit in this Magnum photo essay and it’s not pretty. Actually, it’s really, really scary.
There’s a few things I like about this though.

A Cleveland based for-profit company is looking to establish a “foreclosure clearinghouse” to deliver bank-owned properties to government entities and nonprofits.
ideastream in Cleveland reports REO Clearinghouse is planning to streamline the purchasing process for local agencies that have been endowed with stimulus money to address the housing crisis.

 
A friend of mine took me on a tour of the St. Clair-Superior Neighborhood on the near east side of Cleveland yesterday. This neighborhood is one of the hardest-hit by the housing crisis. Only about 10 percent of the housing is occupied. A local real estate investor has taken an interest in the neighborhood because of its low real estate prices and proximity to downtown and Lake Erie.
We began our tour at an east side park with a nice view of Lake Erie. A lot of people dock their boats …