Cleveland Council Frustrated With City Housing Dept.

Friday, February 1, 2008
Topics: Politics, Other
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Cleveland City Council members used a meeting on community block grant funding to air their frustrations with the city's building and housing department. ideastream's Tasha Flournoy has this report.

City Council was supposed to talk about how community block grant funding can stave off the housing crisis. Instead, members wanted to know why the department hadn’t pushed more code enforcement cases that could lead to criminal prosecution of bad homeowners.

Councilman Jay Westbrook says the department isn’t up to snuff and changes need to happen now. 

Jay Westbrook: We have some dead wood there. We have inspectors who don’t realize their job is to enforce the housing and building code of the city. And those people should be cleaned out. There’s plenty of people that want good jobs in the city.

City officials defend the department’s performance.  Assistant Director Ron O’Leary says the city demolished a record 950 structures-nearly 8 times the number in 2005.  He says razing vacant property was last year’s focus. This year it’s prosecutions.

Director Ed Rybka is expected to discuss more of their plans during the budget hearings next week.

Tasha Flournoy, 90.3