Finding Homes For Liberated Welfare Recipients:
An Interview with Helen Barclay Jones

Aired April 29, 1999

David C. Barnett–This past fall, a Buckeye Rd. realtor and the Cleveland Job Corps got together to create a program to keep a roof over the heads of low-income people who were learning job skills and working towards self-sufficiency. We spoke at that time with Helen Barclay Jones about how her pilot program was created, and she joins us again this morning. Helen Barclay Jones, welcome.

Helen Barclay Jones–Thank you so much.

DCB–Buckeye Rd. is traditionally a neighborhood in Cleveland that was well-known in the '50s and '60s as being a site of a lot of block-busting that was going on, and done by white realtors who scared people out of the neighborhood with the threat of the African-Americans coming in and that sort of thing. What is the perspective of an African-American realtor right now, today, on Buckeye Rd.?

HBJ–It's almost non-existent, that attitude that you're speaking of. Buckeye Rd. is a very congenial area - well, the Buckeye area is a very congenial area. I was co-chair of the Merchants' Association for two years with Michael Fagenbaum, and judging by the name, you know that he's not an African-American . . .

DCB–We've talked to Michael as well.

HBJ–Oh, have you?

DCB–Yes.

HBJ–OK, good, and judging by the name he's not an African-American and we work very well together. I got busy, so I'm not as active this year, even though I'm vice-president. I let them know that I won't be able to attend every meeting, but we have very positive meetings, we do positive things, we created an infomercial about the Buckeye area which went on very well. As a matter of fact, I think it's still being aired, it started in September. We also have started our own non-profit, our own 501C3, so as far as the Buckeye area and that conception of what's going on, I don't think it exists anymore. The businesses are really cleaning up their act, they're taking advantage of the storefront renovation program which the city offers, and if you drive down Buckeye today you will see a totally different neighborhood. It has the little brick crosswalks that the city put in, the street is brand new, and the buildings are well-maintained. There are a few buildings that are still on Buckeye that are in a poor condition, but these are buildings that belong to the older owners who left the neighborhood, we can't find them, can't get them to make any changes, so in the center of that little strip of Buckeye, you'll find a few dilapidated buildings, but basically Buckeye is a place to watch. We're trying to compete, we're trying to catch up with Larchmere.

DCB–To what extent do you deal with folks coming off of welfare and trying to find homes?

HBJ–I've got some tenants who are on welfare, they receive Section 8 through CMHA, and they call me and tell me how much they love me. I mean, we have a wonderful relationship. I do what I can do to help them when they need me, they call me-I've always been sympathetic to the plight of my people because a lot of them had those issues, as far as economics are concerned, and to a lot of reasons, and I do what I can.

DCB–We've talked this past fall about the partnership that you had with Job Corps, and the program to get people, to keep a roof over people's heads while they're learning those job skills. What is the current status of that program?

HBJ–The current status is that we have one bedroom open and what we try to do was have a unit, an apartment unit and two Job Corps students could stay in these bedrooms. We had one girl who had a child so she had a bedroom to herself. When we have a bedroom that's available now and I contacted the Job Corps the other day to talk to them about a programming house that will let them know that we still have another available unit, and it has to be a youth who wants to come to stay in the Cleveland area, because a lot of them come from different cities, so it's got to be somebody who wants to plant their roots here in Cleveland, and a lot of them want to go back home, so it's hard to get somebody to come and stay, but the unit is available.

DCB–And the folks are staying in buildings that you own.

HBJ–Yes.

DCB–So you provide that sort of situation.

HBJ–Right.

DCB–What is the status right now of the housing stock in the Buckeye neighborhood in general? I know that one of the complaints of folks, of some of the young folks that moved out in the '60s, was that there weren't enough houses, and that's why we moved out. We weren't being chased out by anything, we just literally couldn't - is it dilapidated, what's going on?

HBJ–Well, what happened in those times was that we had no new construction in the city of Cleveland. But now, and everybody wanted to go out and move into a new house, or some semblance of newness, the housing stocks in those times were the houses that were built in the 1910s, 1920s, and they wanted to go and move into something that might have been built in the '50s or the '40s. Now we have new houses. I remember the first new house that was built in Cleveland, it was in the Mt. Pleasant area, I helped to market that one, and we had rows and lines and lines of people who just wanted to walk through a new house, to see what a new house smelled like, and today we have several, as a matter of fact, the mayor has put forth really a gallant effort, I'm so proud of him, to build 2,000 houses before the year 2000. So we have new houses going up everywhere there's an empty lot, basically, so that whole idea of having to leave to go into a new house has kind of changed.

DCB–What are the challenges that remain?

HBJ–The challenges that remain in . . .

DCB–In terms of, when we look at the situation where we have to get people into houses, the folks that are on - some of the folks that are on welfare are looking to find a stable place, the women we just heard, that sort of thing. From your perspective.

HBJ–Yeah, that was a really sad story and my heart goes out to her, and I pray for her and her children. As I drove over here, I saw a scene of a person on one of those vents near the street and their bags were on top of the vents and they had the bags laid out like a cot, and they were laying on top of the cot with a sheet over them, and it really tore my heart out, and I understand how that scenario can take place because when a person who has been living on a street for awhile or who has been put out and their whole continent is sad and depressed, and then they go and call somebody for an apartment and they tell them that they don't have any source of income and then their whole attitude is kind of defeatist, anyway, then that person on the other end of the phone, the person who has to pay the mortgage and who is responsible for this property is going to feel like, "what are you going to do to my property, or are you going to pay me, are you going to be honest with me." So here's that whole dichotomy, it's like, "what should I do, I want to help you but I don't want to lose my house, I don't want . . . " and the problem might have been because a lot of people might have been taken advantage of and they're afraid to take that risk. The Section 8 program is a great program to overcome that, because they stand by the rent, they stand by and pay the owner.

DCB–Helen Barclay Jones is the owner of Barclay Jones Realty Company, located in the Buckeye neighborhood of east Cleveland.