Housing and Neighborhoods

Residential instability, housing affordability and low-value/low-quality housing are persistent problems in Cleveland despite a robust and nationally-recognized community development sector.

We work with Cuyahoga County agencies to understand housing and neighborhood issues and to develop data-driven strategies and solutions.

Recent and Current Projects

Powering Cleveland and Cuyahoga County’s community development sector with data

We work with myriad Cuyahoga County community development related agencies to gather relevant data, and we clean, process, and link the data, and provide property and neighborhood level data through community accessible web applications. This gives community agencies the information they need to create their own intelligence as community needs and issues shift and change.

Monitoring housing market recovery

Powered by the Poverty Center’s NEOCANDO housing data, we worked with the Western Reserve Land Conservancy’s Thriving Communities Institute to monitor housing price trends and market recovery following the 2008 housing market crisis.

Middle Neighborhoods

In partnership with the City of Cleveland, we have used our robust housing data to create a typology of Cleveland’s neighborhoods, helping define Cleveland’s “Middle Neighborhoods” and inform strategies for building and retaining this important market segment.

Lead Auditor

Many complex processes need to be coordinated to fulfill the goal of making housing lead safe for Cleveland’s children. The Poverty Center uses its robust integrated property data in its role as the auditor of the City of Cleveland’s rental registration and compliance processes to help all parties see where processes have been successful and to help pinpoint areas for improvement.

City of Cleveland Healthy Homes Initiative

An important component of making housing lead safe is reaching out to Clevelanders and connecting them with available resources. Our integrated property data allowed Healthy Homes organizers across Cleveland to connect to information that helped inform their outreach

Landlord Typology

We worked with the Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition to use our integrated property data to understand characteristics of owners of rental and probable rental properties in Cleveland. This work helps inform outreach and remediation strategies to support and encourage landlords’ compliance with Cleveland’s Lead Safe ordinance.

Eviction

In partnership with the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, we conducted qualitative and quantitative studies to better understand the population facing eviction in Cleveland, and connections between eviction and downstream outcomes. We continue to connect eviction information with our integrated property data and our other work informing housing and neighborhood strategies.

Public Assistance and Homeless Shelter Trajectories

We investigated the extent to which individuals and families in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, were connected to the social safety net in and around the time they (first) entered homeless shelter and whether these supports prevented future reentries into shelter. This study demonstrates the extent to which public assistance programs intersect the trajectories of people experiencing homelessness and suggests that more can be done to protect households and propel them into more stable housing.

Rental market for low-income households

The Poverty Center is collaborating with the Legal Aid Society on Cleveland on a report describing availability of rental housing for low-income households in Cuyahoga County, Ohio and their associated risk of exposing children to lead poisoning. A main focus of the analysis will be to demonstrate the racial inequities associated with access to lead safe, affordable housing.