CLEVELAND — Nick Guinta is a Northeast Ohio urban blight photographer who is concerned about a growing number of unsecured, wide-open, vacant structures presenting a safety hazard in the City of Cleveland.
Guinta showed News 5 pictures and video of an unsecured church on Cleveland's East Side which contained a dangerous collapsing roof, ceiling and walls. Guinta reported homeless people have been living inside, and he believes the vacant church needs to be boarded up by the city before someone is seriously hurt or killed.
“I’ve seen tons of buildings where they have been left untouched," Guinta said. “Unstable floors or roofs falling down, there’s just so many hazards with these places because once you get mold and moisture, you get black mold.”
Cleveland Community activist Ed McDonald told News 5 he reports 100 vacant, unsecured homes to the City of Cleveland every year, but he believes city response time in boarding up the structures still needs to be improved to protect neighborhood safety.
"To allow buildings like this to just sit here and rot in our city is absolutely ridiculous," McDonald said. “As fast as I can get on these properties and report them and get them into the system, it seems like they’re being allowed to sit and just stay there."
McDonald said both the City of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County need to do a better job of holding the delinquent owners of these properties responsible for repairing them, selling them or allowing the city to take them down more quickly.
“You have kids, you have neighbors, you have vagrants who could get inside these properties; something could happen and nobody would even know," McDonald said. "I get ten taken care of, another 10 replace it."
Cleveland Ward 8 Councilman Michael Polensek confirmed the growing issue of unsecured structures. The City of Cleveland told News 5 it performed more than 7,000 board-up jobs at a cost of nearly $7 million in taxpayer dollars since 2018. Still, Polensek said, the growing issues with unsecured homes continue.
Polensek said the city and Cuyahoga County need to get after the property owners. Cuyahoga County cut staffing in its effort to collect delinquent property taxes at some 36,000 properties countywide, he said. Polensek said unless code violations or foreclosures on the properties are issued, taxpayers will continue to pay millions to babysit these problem parcels.
"This house has been tax delinquent for at least 8 years, the owner owes almost $3,000 in delinquent water bills, another $1,000 in sewer bills," Polensek said. “What is inherently wrong in Cuyahoga County that we have over 36,000 houses and properties that are tax delinquent? What is so wrong here that these properties just sit?"
Polensek said the Cuyahoga Landbank met with city and county leaders during a May 3 meeting to discuss the neighborhood safety issue that's hitting taxpayers in the pocketbook.
“The city is going have to come out here and cut the grass, that’s $400, we’re going to have to board it again for another $800, and who’s 'we'? The taxpayers," Polensek said. “The county system is not working; the city code enforcement system is not working. We're hoping that's going to change.”
Thomas Vanover, Cleveland's Chief Building Official, told News 5 changes and improvements in code enforcement continue, with the city just completing a massive survey of 167,000 structures citywide. Vanover said data from the housing survey will be available in four weeks, with the city sending out the single largest mailing of code violation warnings in the city's history later this year.
Vanover admitted keeping up with securing vacant homes is difficult, but he urged residents to report the potentially hazardous homes by using the city's improved 3-1-1 call system.
“There’s a lot of work to do, so it is a cat and mouse game, especially when we have the glut of out-of-town owners," Vanover said.
"When residents report these unsecured homes, the more information we have, the better, and telling them it’s a building and housing complaint gets it right to us, and we’ll deploy inspectors to verify and take action," he said.
Meanwhile, McDonald is hoping the city will continue to examine how to better hold problem property owners responsible for the neighborhood hazard they've created.
“Right now, that property could collapse, and [a] kid could die in there, and we would not know until the next person walks in there and finds that kid dead," McDonald said. "That’s ridiculous that we’re allowing things like this to stand."
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