Foreclosures

Cleveland City near the mouth of Cuyahoga River is in Ohio State and located in Cuyahoga County – the most populous one in Ohio. Lake Erie hugs Cleveland making it an idyllic place to stay. But its economy has been sliding down from bad to worse with the decline in its heavy manufacturing units. Since then it has diversified its activities but the damage to employment had already been done. This was one of the main reasons for the surge in Cleveland house foreclosures. Innumerable Cleveland house foreclosures began to dot the region even before the attack came from the breakdown of the sub-prime mortgages.

The blame for Cleveland house foreclosures can also be put on bad governance and rampant greed. All this combined to make Cleveland one of the notorious foreclosure capitals of USA.

Cleveland house foreclosures began to sneak in as early. In 2007 summer, of the 21 zip codes with the maximum concentrations of foreclosures, 4 were in Cleveland. Slavic Village with 783 postings had the highest number of Cleveland house foreclosures.

One of the main reasons for Cleveland house foreclosures was loss of jobs – it being three times more than the national figures from 2001 to 2003. Since then recovery has been tardy. Richard DeKaser of National City Corporation noted that Ohio was responsible for one fourth of all the job losses in the manufacturing sector from 2001. This led to an exodus of people leaving the state in search of greener pastures. In 1950 there were only 6 cities that were bigger than Cleveland. Cleveland house foreclosures had begun to sneak in about 11 years ago – even when the economy was in fair shape said, Zach Schiller of Policy Matters Ohio.

Cleveland has been badly battered by foreclosures because of a lax government. There was none to watch and oversee matters. The legislature of the state was controlled by banking interests. In 2002 there were attempts to enforce anti-predatory ordinances but it never took off because of opposition from the national lenders. If the ordinances had been put into effect the local lending standards would have been far better than the national criteria. The national lenders understandably did not want to be left out of the party. The banking lobby managed to null the local ordinances. Till very recently Ohio was one of two states that did not mention mortgage borrowers in their statutes relating to consumer protection. In 2006 law was passed against predatory lending but the part about penalties was done away with!

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