The Cuyahoga Land Bank has recently been featured in the national press for our work capturing foreclosed, vacant properties and quickly turning that land back to productive use. This summer, we established partnerships with Wells Fargo and Bank of America, which allows us to take low asset, foreclosed properties from these banks and either demolish these largely devalued properties or renovate them and put them back on the market.
Wells Fargo, working through the REO Clearinghouse (REO CH), began donating vacant and foreclosed low asset properties to the Cuyahoga Land Bank along with a contribution toward demolition equal to $3,500 per property in their NSP 2 target areas and $7,500.00 per property in the rest of Cuyahoga County. Bank of America recently entered into a similar agreement with the Cuyahoga Land Bank to donate up to 100 vacant and foreclosed low asset properties following the same monetary donation structure as the Wells Fargo agreement. These recent partnerships added to our growing list, which includes similar relationships with Fannie Mae, HUD and JP Morgan Chase.
“Each partnership we are able to establish provides us with more resources to tackle the issues of blight created by foreclosure and abandonment within our communities,” said Cuyahoga Land Bank President Gus Frangos.
The national press agreed that our efforts to eliminate blight through these partnerships is worthy of note. In early August, came to Cleveland to discuss our partnership with Bank of America. Then Time picked up on the story and did a series of pieces on the topic, including a story on why demolition is one of the tools to fight the effects of foreclosure, a photo essay on demolition and on our demolition strategy, which is being considered as a national policy in Washington. NPR National also found our partnerships with these banks newsworthy, in addition to highlighting other innovative solutions such as encouraging community gardens and expanding yards for neighbors.