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Old 04-21-2014, 08:38 PM
 
Location: Ak-Rowdy, OH
1,522 posts, read 2,986,763 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by thinkalot View Post
The average house in Cleveland was built in 1924. They were built for the people moving in for the mills. They are not fine homes built by master craftsmen. They were built quickly and cheaply.

The cost of rehabbing one of those houses would be way too expensive. No one would ever buy it at that price.

The poster that wanted to bring in jobs AND ban new construction. How do you think that would work? New construction adds jobs. New Housing Starts is a measurement. It is considered a good one, if not the best for real estate.

Demolish and then demolish more. Give the land and tax breaks to whoever will build new on those lots. It would probably be only 2 or 3% of the lots but better than nothing.

The amount of people that want to rehab rather than build new amazes me. It has only worked in a handful of places and Cleveland, Youngstown, and other rust belt cities aren't on that list.
At the time they were run of the mill, but due to changes in technology and available materials at that time (and not available now), those old houses were built by what would be considered "master craftsmen" today.

Find someone who will do plaster correctly, build wooden windows, make stained glass windows, or install crown molding, cornices etc. Those people are all considered to be master craftsmen or at least skilled craftsmen today that were commonplace in 1924. The types of accouterments are generally considered higher end today were found in your run of the mill blue collar houses then.

On top of that, you can't buy old growth wood that those houses are built out of. You can't get extremely long spans of wood like that. Hell, the wood floors they put in even "nicer" houses today are made of mass produced veneered garbage yet almost all of the cheap housing you're referring to had solid wood floors.

Obviously building techniques have changed and nobody cared about their basement not looking like a dungeon in 1924, but an equivalent house built for an equivalent budget today would (and are) made of plywood and vinyl siding. There's no plaster cornices. No leaded windows. No solid wood floors. No solid wood mantels. No solid wood stained glass built ins.

Floors are carpet over plywood. Siding is vinyl. Fireplaces, if there are any, are gas inserts surrounded by painted plywood. Cabinets are pressed board. Trim - what little there is - is plain and mass produced. Building materials are new growth short span treated junk.

New building adds jobs. So does rehab. The thought that only new builds are good for the economy is a fallacy of the worst kind of illogical thinking.

The economics of rehab vary on each project, and admittedly unfortunately low housing values here prevent significant rehab AND new housing starts in many situations because it doesn't make sense economically. Particularly for those in the apartment rental industry.
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Old 04-21-2014, 08:45 PM
 
Location: Youngstown, Oh.
5,496 posts, read 9,433,130 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SquareBetterThanAll View Post
The reason those houses were so appealing is they all have 10 year tax abatements (or something like that). And I'm sure they are nice, new houses as well.

I'm going to disagree with you on that. The problem many of the cities have is that they have tried to emulate suburban development and the cities are not going to do "the suburbs" better than the suburbs do.

The attraction to the cities for many people is that there are dense, walkable neighborhoods in the cities and for a certain section of the population, that is what they want.

Again I live in Akron instead of Cleveland, but I live in the neighborhood that I do precisely because it does NOT look like the suburbs. My neighborhood is walkable. Houses are close together with small setbacks. I can walk out my front door and be at the library, movie theater, restaurants, park, pet store, barbershop, neighborhood school, pharmacy, grocery store, bars, insurance agent, bank, vintage clothing store, cobbler, and more, all in less than 10 minutes by foot, without ever needing to get in my car, and without having to cross 6 lanes of traffic at 45 mph.

You know what the biggest thing is that messes up the flow of foot traffic in my neighborhood? Where some jerk developer in the 60s or 70s demo'd half a block and built a suburban style mini-plaza with a strip of asphalt in the front. It screws it all up and looks out of place.

That's the same thing that happens when they drop suburban style development in the middle of a neighborhood. It's out of place. It doesn't fit, And it's never going to be a good fit for either group of people.

If all I wanted was a McMansion on a lot with no trees, no sidewalks, no streetlights, and accessibility only by car, why in the world would I buy one in the middle of Cleveland? I can get oceans of those kinds of houses in Solon or Strongsville and not have to bother will all the downsides that come along with being in Cleveland, like poor city services.

... unless I got a fat tax abatement. But when that runs out, then what?

You know what I can't buy in Solon or Strongsville or Bath? A dense, walkable neighborhood. Like Cleveland has. Or Lakewood. Or Cleveland Heights. Or Akron. I can't buy (for the most part) 1900 Queen Anne. I can't buy a house with a turret or vintage stained glass windows. I can't buy a house with REAL hardwood floors. Or where every room has 5 to 6 foot high windows.

That's what I think so many of the cities have missed being so demo happy. They're taking down their biggest selling points. They aren't going to attract the reretarff's of the world. But they will attract people like me or the many others that don't want to live in a place like Solon.
Amen to so many parts of this post!

Instead of trying to emulate the suburbs, rust belt cities need to preserve and invest in what they already have; relatively dense, walkable neighborhoods made up of solid, older housing stock, that can't be replicated today.
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Old 04-21-2014, 09:02 PM
 
Location: Lebanon, OH
7,045 posts, read 8,859,226 times
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Every major city is having this issue, some more so than others. This was caused by sending manufacturing jobs overseas and the suburbanite mentality that commuting an hour to a job every day is normal. Once corporate offices start moving out of the cities the urban core with no tax base will be left to rot, a giant real estate junk yard.
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Old 04-21-2014, 09:13 PM
 
Location: Cleveland
3,412 posts, read 5,083,520 times
Reputation: 3081
Quote:
Originally Posted by SquareBetterThanAll View Post
At the time they were run of the mill, but due to changes in technology and available materials at that time (and not available now), those old houses were built by what would be considered "master craftsmen" today.

Find someone who will do plaster correctly, build wooden windows, make stained glass windows, or install crown molding, cornices etc. Those people are all considered to be master craftsmen or at least skilled craftsmen today that were commonplace in 1924. The types of accouterments are generally considered higher end today were found in your run of the mill blue collar houses then.

On top of that, you can't buy old growth wood that those houses are built out of. You can't get extremely long spans of wood like that. Hell, the wood floors they put in even "nicer" houses today are made of mass produced veneered garbage yet almost all of the cheap housing you're referring to had solid wood floors.

Obviously building techniques have changed and nobody cared about their basement not looking like a dungeon in 1924, but an equivalent house built for an equivalent budget today would (and are) made of plywood and vinyl siding. There's no plaster cornices. No leaded windows. No solid wood floors. No solid wood mantels. No solid wood stained glass built ins.

Floors are carpet over plywood. Siding is vinyl. Fireplaces, if there are any, are gas inserts surrounded by painted plywood. Cabinets are pressed board. Trim - what little there is - is plain and mass produced. Building materials are new growth short span treated junk.

New building adds jobs. So does rehab. The thought that only new builds are good for the economy is a fallacy of the worst kind of illogical thinking.

The economics of rehab vary on each project, and admittedly unfortunately low housing values here prevent significant rehab AND new housing starts in many situations because it doesn't make sense economically. Particularly for those in the apartment rental industry.
Some have character some don't. Many of the houses in the inner city were built for and occupied by poor people, and are pretty run-of the mill, carbon copies of each other. If they were built today, we'd say they were cookie cutter. The typical Cleveland duplex (which describes probably 60-70% of the housing stock on the East Side) has 1 bathroom and 2 bedrooms per floor, a medium sized kitchen, a dining room with some built-ins, a living room with a fireplace or mock fireplace, and a large front porch. The floors are "hardwood" but not high quality, and are usually covered with vinyl or carpet. There usually aren't too many architectural details like crown molding, at least in the city proper. East Cleveland and Cleveland Heights both have many "antique" gems, as do certain neighborhoods of the East Side of Cleveland proper, particularly Glenville, and Collinwood near the Lake. And there are some very "cute" and unique houses in Slavic Village that are worth saving. But I don't think that your average run-of-the-mill Cleveland duplex is really greater than a new construction house. Their layout is generally not good to meet the needs of the average family today, their wiring is often outdated, they usually have lead paint and asbestos. Not the type of place that I would ever want to buy, unless I was willing to sink tons of money into it.
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Old 04-21-2014, 10:15 PM
 
Location: Cleveland, Ohio
254 posts, read 303,615 times
Reputation: 289
New thread started by reretarff?

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Old 04-21-2014, 11:00 PM
 
Location: Ak-Rowdy, OH
1,522 posts, read 2,986,763 times
Reputation: 1152
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cleverfield View Post
Some have character some don't. Many of the houses in the inner city were built for and occupied by poor people, and are pretty run-of the mill, carbon copies of each other. If they were built today, we'd say they were cookie cutter. The typical Cleveland duplex (which describes probably 60-70% of the housing stock on the East Side) has 1 bathroom and 2 bedrooms per floor, a medium sized kitchen, a dining room with some built-ins, a living room with a fireplace or mock fireplace, and a large front porch. The floors are "hardwood" but not high quality, and are usually covered with vinyl or carpet. There usually aren't too many architectural details like crown molding, at least in the city proper. East Cleveland and Cleveland Heights both have many "antique" gems, as do certain neighborhoods of the East Side of Cleveland proper, particularly Glenville, and Collinwood near the Lake. And there are some very "cute" and unique houses in Slavic Village that are worth saving. But I don't think that your average run-of-the-mill Cleveland duplex is really greater than a new construction house. Their layout is generally not good to meet the needs of the average family today, their wiring is often outdated, they usually have lead paint and asbestos. Not the type of place that I would ever want to buy, unless I was willing to sink tons of money into it.
That's where the economics part comes into play. I was just in one of your Cleveland duplexes on the East Side over the weekend, and yes, the hardwood floors are under the carpet. It still had leaded glass built ins in the dining room. And the wood trim, while not amazingly ornate, was nicer than what is put in new cookie cutter houses. Most of the plaster was still in good shape. And the brick fireplace - a real fireplace - was flanked on both sides by full hardwood built-ins as well that stretched wall to wall.

My point wasn't that they should all be saved at any costs as many of them are in horrific shape. My point was that what constituted a cheap house in the 1920s has by and large better quality features than an equivalent house (or duplex) of today.

At what level of modern house would you expect to find:
Hardwood floors of any grade throughout the house (and I'm not talking about veneered snap together "hardwood flooring" that is put in now)
Solid wood built ins with leaded glass windows in the dining room
Leaded glass windows
5 to 6 foot high windows in every room
10 foot high ceilings
Solid wood kitchen cabinets that stretch to the ceiling... whether 8 or 10 feet
Mid-tier solid wood trim throughout the whole house
Full front porch
Full brick siding (not faux brick or brick faced veneer siding)
Full brick fireplace with chimney
Wall to wall solid wood built ins in the living room

You won't find that full list even in houses that aren't entry level or "poor person's" duplexes. I would be willing to bet you would be spending at least $250,000 before you even start to come close. Yet every single one of those things was in the duplex I was in over the weekend. A duplex that was built as an everyman's duplex in an everyman's neighborhood in the teens.

That's it. To say we should just demo and replace with modern, equivalent housing because it's not like the old ones were built by master craftsmen assumes that building techniques were the same then as they are now. There was no plywood, no pressed board, no drywall, no carpet, no vinyl tile, no new growth treated wood when these houses were built. They had to have higher grade features because the garbage we have now wasn't available then.

But yes, I get what you're saying. Nice cosmetic features do not make up for decades of neglect. I get that. I was just pointing out that the posters statement that 1920s era houses weren't built by master craftsmen really does not take into account what type of skill was _necessary_ to build a house back then and the effort that was made on every the lowest level house that just is not going to be duplicated in equivalent new housing.

Last edited by SquareBetterThanAll; 04-21-2014 at 11:21 PM..
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Old 04-22-2014, 01:15 AM
 
Location: Cleveland
3,412 posts, read 5,083,520 times
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I see what you're saying. These houses do have some nice features, and some of the construction methods used are a lost art. But not everything that was done back then was better than what they have today. In particular, roofing materials, and insulation have advanced considerably since those houses were built. Remember, there was no aluminum in those days, no fiberglass, no PVC. The materials they used were sometimes hazardous (plumbing and paint that contained lead for example), and were not energy efficient. Being constructed in the old school way also means higher repair costs today. I can appreciate the construction that went into these houses, but when you think about how little people knew about health risks and energy efficiency back then, the houses lose much of their appeal.
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Old 04-22-2014, 07:38 AM
 
Location: Ak-Rowdy, OH
1,522 posts, read 2,986,763 times
Reputation: 1152
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cleverfield View Post
I see what you're saying. These houses do have some nice features, and some of the construction methods used are a lost art. But not everything that was done back then was better than what they have today. In particular, roofing materials, and insulation have advanced considerably since those houses were built. Remember, there was no aluminum in those days, no fiberglass, no PVC. The materials they used were sometimes hazardous (plumbing and paint that contained lead for example), and were not energy efficient. Being constructed in the old school way also means higher repair costs today. I can appreciate the construction that went into these houses, but when you think about how little people knew about health risks and energy efficiency back then, the houses lose much of their appeal.
Oh definitely. I completely omit an argument about basements, for instance, because how basements were constructed then as compared to now isn't even close. I can't think of a redeeming factor for basement construction from that time period.

My only point is that what was considered "mass produced" for that time and what is considered "mass produced" now are two completely different ballgames, It's like dismissing a building because "It was only built as a Sears store." The way they built Sears stores in the 20s and the way they built Sears stores in the 80s are vastly different. Sears stores from the 20s would be considered near architectural artwork if they were reproduced with the same attention to detail today.

Coincidentally, the duplex I was in is only still standing (in my opinion) because it won the Cleveland duplex lottery and has had people occupying it more or less continuously for its entire lifetime. It hasn't had any significant maintenance in decades and if it is ever left unoccupied for more than a brief time it will eventually meet the wrecking ball. There's no way it would ever make sense to renovate it.
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Old 04-22-2014, 08:47 AM
 
Location: Cleveland
246 posts, read 472,893 times
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I think it should be pointed out that much of the "unique" Cleveland housing stock on the Westside has been restored. Places like Tremont, Ohio City and the Bridge, Clinton and Franklin Blvds that connect from Ohio City to Detroit-Shoreway all have nicely maintained, unique hosing. The places with cheap older housing stock built for mill workers (e.g. the stockyards and Clark-Fulton) tend to be wasting away since the housing stock leaves a lot to be desired. Newer areas in the city proper like Puritas-Longmead on the westside and parts of Lee-Miles on the East side tend to be less run down simply because the houses aren't older yet. These are the areas that I would expect to see the most decay eventualy because those WWII bungalows and ranches have very little unique charecteristices and are even smaller than the older "cheap" housing. Areas with a high concentration of duplexes will also tend to be less desirable and less likely to see large scale gentrification. This is the case in a city like Lakewood even. The streets there with numerous duplexes look more rundown than even the streets further east (which tend to be less desirable in Lakewood) that have unique housing stock. Streets like Grace, Lewis, Parkway, Cohassett, Waterbury on Lakewood's eastside are all much better maintained on a whole than the streets on the far westside south of Detroit and bordering the metroparks (Maile, Owego, Rio, Gridley, etc) simply because of the housing stock.
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Old 04-22-2014, 08:57 AM
 
Location: Youngstown, Oh.
5,496 posts, read 9,433,130 times
Reputation: 5604
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cleverfield View Post
I see what you're saying. These houses do have some nice features, and some of the construction methods used are a lost art. But not everything that was done back then was better than what they have today. In particular, roofing materials, and insulation have advanced considerably since those houses were built. Remember, there was no aluminum in those days, no fiberglass, no PVC. The materials they used were sometimes hazardous (plumbing and paint that contained lead for example), and were not energy efficient. Being constructed in the old school way also means higher repair costs today. I can appreciate the construction that went into these houses, but when you think about how little people knew about health risks and energy efficiency back then, the houses lose much of their appeal.
There was a big debate about the merits of old vs. new construction in this thread, so I won't go into that here:
http://www.city-data.com/forum/urban...isposable.html

But, IMO, the issues of energy efficiency and health risks are overblown to make the option of demolition seem more acceptable.

When someone with a demolition agenda looks at an older house in fair condition, they might say: "it's not economically viable to rehab that house, because all the windows need replaced for energy efficiency, the interior needs gutted so that the walls can be insulated, and modern wiring and plumbing installed, etc." In reality, old windows, in good shape, paired with storm windows, are as efficient as new windows, for a lot less cost. If the furnace/boiler were replaced with a new, high efficiency unit, and the attic was properly insulated, much of the energy inefficiency would be mitigated. Asbestos is only a danger if it's friable, and not encapsulated. Lead paint is a danger if it's in poor shape and flaking/chipping, or if it's removed without taking proper precautions. Knob and tube wiring is safe if it's not overloaded, or covered in insulation. (in my own house, I plan to leave the old K&T in place, and run new circuits for appliances/equipment that require heavy electrical loads.) I could go on.
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