Cleveland's Slavic Village Becoming Forclosure Crisis National "Poster Neighborhood"

This week's Newsweek features a lengthly story about how predatory lending decimated Cleveland's Slavic Village neighborhood. Over the past week two public radio programs have reported on Slavic Village: NPR's Weekend Edition and American Public Media's Marketplace.

The Newsweek story is devastating. We heard about Cleveland trying to regulate predatory lending and being preempted by state officials. As the story makes clear, the unregulated environment and promises of easy money led to widespread fraud:

Yet insidious forces were at work in the neighborhood. After the mortgage-refinancing boom of 2003–04, demand for fresh subprime "product" grew so intense that lending standards nationwide disintegrated. To meet Wall Street's demand for a steady supply, lenders kept reaching lower and lower down the scale of quality in both property and borrowers, until the street hustlers jumped in to offer up their "product." Not surprisingly, the once shunned inner city became a prime lending spot across America. That, in turn, led to the phenomenon of reverse redlining. More than a decade ago, the big story was the redlining of low-income, often African-American, neighborhoods by banks that refused to lend there. Now the opposite happened.

Wall Street's insatiable demand inspired the local shop owner and plumber to go into the mortgage business—what Brancatelli calls "station-wagon brokers."

"There are a lot of former drug dealers who have gotten into the business," adds Ed Kraus of the Ohio Attorney General's office. Many brokers simply invented biographies and jobs for their indigent borrowers, officials say. In one case, says Brancatelli, Kellogg saw a lawn mower in a truck belonging to Williams's husband and declared him a "landscaper" for the mortgage records.

University Reshuffling in NEO?

Friday the PD broke the news that the University of Akron and Cleveland state might merge. Or might not. Or that NEOUCOM will move to Cleveland. Or Akron. Or will stay in Rootstown.

One thing is for sure -- things will stay the same up to the moment that they change.

Oh, and no one will tell us what's happening.

To back up a bit, the PD story ledes as follows:

An idea to shake up the state's college system could combine Cleveland State University and the University of Akron and bring a medical school to downtown Cleveland.

Some of the talk involves moving the Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy, known as NEOUCOM, from Portage County or expanding its Rootstown-based campus.

The story then checks in with all the players -- Gov. Strickland, University Chancellor Fingerhut, UA Prez Proenza and CSU Prez Michael Schwartz -- all of whom give a version of "no comment." The PD does not disclose who gave them the information in the lede. The story just says this might happen, but no one is talking.

Katie Byard at the Beacon called Proenza and got a story up on Ohio dot com yesterday saying that such talk is premature. Speaking on NewsNightAkron, WAKR's Larry States said the same thing -- Proenza said the discussion is "not ready for prime time." (As of right now AkronNewsNow is offline.)

Byard's breaking story has been replaced with a more extensively reported version in today's print edition. There we learn that:

University of Akron President Luis Proenza said Friday that talk of combining his school and Cleveland State University has been around a long time.

In an e-mail to the UA campus community, Proenza wrote that ''the idea described'' in an article in Friday's Plain Dealer ''is merely one of those ideas'' being presented as ''bold proposals that would strengthen higher education in our region.''

Oh, and Mike Rasor, the ABJ's U Akron sports blogger is not amused. He climbs all over Chancellor Fingerhut, resetting the "You say finger" chant. And somewhere Tim Russo smiles.

Most Akronites will side with Rasor at the suggestion of anything like a merger. Despite the fact that Akron is half again as big as CSU, despite the fact that Akron has evolved from a commuter school to a research university with a real campus and a growing community and CSU really hasn't, Akronites will assume that merger means becoming the CSU/Akron campus. As Ed Esposito notes, that's how it is when you "collaberate" with The Big City. And no one around here will accept that.

According to States last night, Chancellor Fingerhut "decries the lack of a world class research institution" outside of Ohio State. Akron certainly has done more to work toward that end than CSU -- to the point that Polymer is truly a world class center.

So while merging Akron into Cleveland State makes little sense, repurposing Cleveland State as a satellite of Akron might. How about Northeast Ohio State University at Akron with a Cleveland campus? Clevelanders are no more likely to live peacefully with that idea that we would tolerate the reverse, but there it is.

Hey, no one said this regionalism stuff would be easy.

Joe Finley Handed Me a Flier

Quixotic Mayoral candidate Joe Finley was handing out fliers at the neighborhood Fourth of July bike parade.

The parade itself should be enough of a hoot. Kids decorate their bikes with red white (or silver) and blue stuff from Pat Catans and ride from the tolerably snooty intersection of Delaware and Sunnyside to unbearably snooty intersection of Delaware and Mayfair. Then they one at a time parade in front of the judges narrated by -- not making this up -- Tom Cousineau dressed like George Washington. One of these years I'll get video and post it.

In any event, standing, waiting for Kid T to ride before the judges I got the flier from Joe:

This is the exact flier that Kyle got last week at his house, but I hadn't looked at it closely. That bit I've circled is interesting. Lets get in a little tighter there:


Well that's what its all about, isn't it? Apart from the dark whispers from people who think everyone is corrupt, the real issue with Mayor Plusqellec is his utter lack of tact, politic or social graces. He is forever combative, defensive, brusque and high-handed.

He's also an effective mayor. Akron is in far better shape than most cities in northern Ohio and at least as well off as any. We fret about Akron losing population, but visit Youngstown and it looks like a neutron bomb went off. Finley is right; no one should have to endure public insults from the Mayor's office. But if the Mayor is doing most things right, even though he's generally a dick, it's a lot easier to put up with that. And anyone trying to challenge the Mayor needs to demonstrate that he is as talented, along with being nicer. From everything I've heard, Joe Finley is not that guy.

Which brings me the best picture I've taken as a blogger, but haven't yet shared. The occasion was the Advance Northeast Ohio launch. Both Mayor Plusquellec and Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson were there and after the launch program, all the VIPs were available for pictures. Plusqellec and Jackson were set to stand together for a photo, but first Don had something to say. And say. And say.

It went on like this for a solid ten minutes with Mayor Plusqellec gesticulating, arguing, driving his point home and Mayor Jackson overwhelmed by the tidal rush of Don-ness. The press photographers waited to take the picture and Jackson for the most part just listened, looking increasingly like he'd gladly give up the office just to make it stop. You could almost make out the thought balloon reading "Geez Don, this is a photo op. Can't you chew on my ass in private like usual?"

Well, maybe in a perfect world no one would have endure insults from the Mayor's office. But in the world we live in I want someone who will fight for my town. And in an argument between Plusquellec and the Mayor of the big city to the north, our guy wins every time.

Polite or effective. You make the call.

Lorain Public Works Discovers the Interweb [Updated]

The headline in the deadtree edition of the PeeDee caught my eye: “Lorain taps Web to fix its potholes.” Wow. From what I read on Word of Mouth, Lorain isn’t known for cutting edge technology, but could they be turning a corner? And what sort of new web tool are they using? A wiki? Some sort of open source mapping? Do they have some sort of killer app for directing the crews?

Not exactly. From the second graf of the story:

The city's newest tool to fill potholes is e-mail notification, which is getting praise from both residents and city officials.

Oh. Email. Um, yeah. How 1989 of them.

Well, according to the PD, this actually passes for innovation among public works departments:

John Mahoney, deputy director of the Ohio Municipal League, said he has not heard of other cities using e-mail for potholes, but said it is a great way to deal with City Hall.

Apparently the email obviates problems with people calling a pothole call center and forgetting to leave some crucial bit of information. And, presumably, a problem with the call center operator forgetting to ask for the information. And problems with the reporting party blocking caller ID and preventing a call back.

I went onto the Lorain site and easily found the pothole reporting page. It says “To report a pothole, send your E-mails to POTHOLES” The email address embed in POTHOLES turns out to be the regular address for the streets department. So clearly, it's not going into some special processing program. Someone just gets the email and passes it on.

The PD article doesn’t go into much detail about how the thing works, which is the rub. I doubt the problem with getting potholes repaired is incomplete phone calls. A better guess is that potholes remain potholes because the street department is overextended, inefficient or both. What emails may save on is the number of calls coming into a call center, which is a help. But an email is just as likely as a phone call to have incomplete information, which means someone has to email back and ask for clarification.

The PD story starts with an anecdote of almost instant pothole repair. Is that typical? Well, I surfed through Word of Mouth to get some feel and found this passage in a general rant about the city:



Which isn’t good.

Out of curiosity I emailed Akron’s Highway Maintenance Department to ask if people can report potholes here in Akron via email. Joyce Batchik from public works responded almost immediately:

[Y]ou can use this e mail address for potholes but most of our work orders
come from our call center reached by dialing 311 on a home phone or
330-375-2311 via cell phone. People use this address mostly for
correspondence. Our call center puts in the initial work order and our
foreman pick up these work orders. This is the regular address for the
public works department.

The email address in question is Publicworks[at]ci.akron.oh.us. So apparently Akron has been doing this all along, though hasn't thought to frontpage a story about it on the city website.

UPDATE: I got an email from City spokesman Mark Williamson clarifying how Akron's site works:

A secretary at Public Works monitors the 'Public Works' address but it is used for correspondence rather than work orders. If a pothole request goes to that address, Joyce would need to enter it into CSR to get it into the work flow. She has enough to do already so we don't want to encourage this activity.

Calling 3-1-1 is the best thing going; but if a resident is a techie who just has to use e-mail, the Mayor's Action Center is the preferred way to go. Go to the City website, click on the 3-1-1 logo, and in the middle of the page it says, "Report problems on line" with the link to the MAC.

The 311 logo is reproduced at right and appears all through the Akron website. (I don't have a link embedded in it here, so don't bother.) Clicking through on the Akron site leads to this page that indeed has an embedded link in the line "report problems online." That link leads you to this online form for reporting. The form includes specific fields for leaving contact information. In other words, Akron has long been doing what Lorain supposedly innovated, and doing it in a more technically sophisticated and effective manner.

[End Update]

By the way, The Plain Dealer has set up its own page for reporting potholes in Cleveland. While there you can read items other people have submitted and look at a Google map of Cleveland that right now has no potholes added to it, but presumably will be updated soon. And no word whether Cleveland's public works department is reading.

Gay Tourism in Cleveland?

Today’s WCPN 9:00 show focused on the effort to market Cleveland as a gay-friendly tourist destination. I got a bit of a heads-up on the issue with this article in the Gay People’s Chronicle. (Listen to the program)

The upshot is that the Convention and Visitor’s Bureau is working with the Cleveland LGBT Community Center to put up a gay-specific web page on the Convention Bureau website and otherwise reach out to gays to come here.

One factoid that struck me: The overwhelming concern for gays traveling anywhere is that they will be safe. That is they will not be hassled, harassed or jumped when, for instance, holding hands in public with a partner. Think for a moment about how much that sucks. Think about how likely it is that someone willingly chooses a life where that happens. Think about that as you consider Ted Haggards’ miracle conversion from closet gay hypocrite to out ex-gay hypocrite.

Anyway, best of luck to Cleveland will all of that. I wonder about C-town and the safety thing. More importantly I wonder about overcoming the biggest barrier to generating tourism in Northeast Ohio – the fact that we have about 20 days a year of entirely nonsucky weather. I love the place, but let’s face facts.

As this moves forward, we need a Wingnut Wigout Watch. Someone on the Right is going to try to make political points with the increasingly alienated Culture Worriers. Some lawmaker is going to propose something along the lines of a state law barring tax dollars from being spent blah blah blah. They may even schedule a Wingnut Action Lobby Day around it. The clock is ticking on this one.

Finally I wonder if the Con Bureau and the LGBT Center have been in touch with Carrie Callahan. She might have some interesting ideas.