HELP! and Going Green Without Going Broke

I need help from you, my readers. A few weeks ago I was published in Tina Brown's new online publication, The Daily Beast. In an article about what makes Bernie Madoff tick, the lead sentence I wrote read as follows: If it's true that, as E.L. Doctorow observed, "Duplicity, of course, is the basis of civilization," does it follow that as we become more "civilized," the more we're prone to flim-flamming our fellow beings?

The problem is, Doctorow emailed the editors of the Beastie, saying that he couldn't recall where (or if) he'd written that line, and asked that he be reminded of which book it was in. Now I'm positive that he wrote it, but I read it over 15 years ago, and can’t recall in which of his many books I read it in. Dinner is on me at Table 45 for anyone who can find the quote in one of Doctorow's books, from between the period of 1960 to 1990. Whatever reputation I have is hanging in the balance here.

Going Green, Without Someone Going Broke

California social justice and environmental activist Van Jones' (pictured) most recent book, The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems seems to have been written with Cleveland in mind. In it, among other things, he proposes workable solutions to utilizing hundreds of acres of long-vacant inner-city land to grow food, while employing currently unemployed former incarcerated persons to raise the crops and distribute them.

Many groups and governmental bodies have been diligently working in Cleveland to bring these — and other — dreams and plans into reality, and our city’s nascent efforts are mentioned in Jones’ book, which is a must read for anyone seriously interested in our city’s future.

So too are the reports by the City of Cleveland Planning Commission (“Connecting Cleveland, 2020 Citywide Plan”) and the “Cleveland Land Lab” paper (prepared by the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative, a project of Kent State University).

For far too long we’ve been sitting around waiting, hoping and wishing for a new Ford or Chevy plant to be built in the area and save us… but guess what? that just ain’t happening. We’re going to have to work our way of this mess a few creative jobs at a time.

With the passage of a bill in Columbus that sets up a countywide land bank that Jim Rokakis so ardently championed, our area is poised to make a quantum leap forward. However, some care has to be taken to assure that in our eagerness to turn Cleveland green, we don’t harm some residents in the process.

Persistent stories of unscrupulous real estate speculators using coercive tactics to virtually steal the homes of residents in marginal and blighted areas continue to circulate in neighborhoods such as the one I live in, Hough. I fully understand that large tracts of land have to be assembled to carryout some of the projects that many organizations have in mind, and I also understand that some homeowners have unrealistically high expectations when it comes to the value of their property.

However, a fair price can and should be arrived at for property... institutions shouldn’t be allowed to rob folks, and homeowners shouldn’t be allowed to stick institutions up.

Elderly residents who are living in homes where their mortgage has been paid off for years should not be forced to take on another mortgage if their homes are needed for development; they should be relocated to other, mortgage-free housing to live out the remainder of their years. If they have to be subsidized, then so be it.

Perhaps there needs to be a countywide ombudsman who assures that neither the homeowner(s) nor the potential developer(s) are taken advantage of. The obvious answer is to use the services of am honest real estate appraiser, but as the recent flipping and foreclosure debacles have proved, finding such a professional is well neigh impossible. If ever there was an industry that’s in need of stronger rules, regulations and oversight it’s appraisers.

Why we haven’t seen more appraisers doing the perp walk — arm-in-arm, handcuffed to shady, slime-ball mortgage brokers — is a mystery to me.

Mark my words, if something — or somebody — is not put in place to protect elderly, poor and under-educated homeowners, some of them are going to be taken to the cleaners as we attempt to make Cleveland greener.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com
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