Look through squinted eyes and you can still see what once attracted people to Cleveland’s Slavic Village.
The area took its name from the Czech and Polish immigrants who settled there in the mid-19th century to work the city’s wool and steel mills. Its tree-lined streets and attractive, wood-framed homes were once home to a community filled with factory workers, young families and first-time homebuyers.
Small pockets still have that family feel, but decline set in during the 1980s as those jobs moved overseas and drug dealers and violence moved in. The city authorities cracked down, local people rallied round, and until a few years ago residents said life in the village seemed to be improving again. Then came the sub-prime debacle.
Now Slavic Village looks as if it has been hit by a hurricane. And this man-made disaster rivals hurricane Katrina when it comes to displacing families. The 2005 storm displaced some 35,000 people in the worst-hit districts of New Orleans. Since 2003 34,156 people have lost their homes to repossession in the Cleveland area, according to Case Western Reserve University, and the pace of those losses is accelerating. The new year is barely two months old and so far there have been 1,857 foreclosures in the Cleveland area. >>>>
Cleveland: ghost town created by America’s loan scandal
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