Cleveland City Council approved sweeping plans to bring new housing and jobs the East Side neighborhoods of Hough, St. Clair-Superior and Central.
Last week, Mayor Justin Bibb's administration rolled out the Housing Innovation District: a vision to overhaul zoning, permitting and reinvestment in those low-income neighborhoods grappling with decades of disinvestment.
"I refuse to accept that any of our neighborhoods sit in the state of perpetual decline," said Chief of Integrated Development Tom McNair at a council committee meeting on Monday.
Council approved some of those plans at its final meeting Monday before summer recess. Those included reducing 鈥� and in some cases, eliminating 鈥� permitting fees for new construction in the target area, establishing form based code and spending $750,000 toward building new houses.
"We don't have the luxury to continue to manage poverty in the way that we have been," said Councilmember Stephanie Howse-Jones, who represents much of the Housing Innovation District. "We have to connect to real opportunity to increase household income."
The final piece of the administration's plan is establishing a tax increment financing district, similar to the Shore-to-Core-to-Shore TIF district Downtown. Bibb's administration said the district, which temporarily forgoes increases in property taxes to reinvest back into public infrastructure, will help bolster the neighborhoods with improved roads, streetscapes and parks.
That piece of legislation is not yet ready for council approval, McNair said. The city is still in talks with the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, but they plan to move forward with the TIF district proposal later this year.
In the meantime, the city expects shovels in the ground for their market pilots this summer. The city's $750,000 will be bolstered by $2 million from the Mandel and Cleveland foundations. Those funds will construct 20 homes on East 65 and East 67th streets, and rehab ten existing houses near the new construction. The city will also renovate two storefronts on St. Clair Avenue.
Some council members wondered if their own neighborhoods might get similar upgrades. As West Side Councilmember Brian Kazy quipped about the administration "opening a can of worms," McNair assured the project could be replicated.
"We need to show that this works," McNair said. "We need to get it moving, but we do think that this is a model that we can move around the city.鈥�
about about 43% of residents live below the poverty line in Hough; 38% in St. Clair-Superior; and 70% in Central.
McNair said those neighborhoods are the place to start, building on other nearby major investments such as a plan to redevelop the East Side's lake shoreline and the Midline manufacturing revival project.
