Lakewood has just received another nod from the national media.  The City is featured in the article How To Save The Housing Market: Destroy Homes which appears in the September 5, 2011 issue of Time.  “If you close your eyes and try to imagine Middle America, you might picture Lakewood, Ohio, a working-class suburb of Cleveland whose orderly residential streets, tidy houses with postage-stamp lawns and median household income of $44,000 are the very foundation of the American Century.  With good public schools, an economically diverse population, multiple parks and 33 churches, it’s been home to generations of families in the Cleveland area,” states the magazine.

The article focuses on the national housing market and uses Lakewood as an example of a community trying to improve the market by demolishing nuisance properties.  The article discusses the recent demolition of 1549 Lakewood Avenue and how it had jumped from absentee landlord to absentee landlord and had become a criminal nuisance property.  Lakewood has demolished 12 of these types of homes in recent years with another 11 scheduled to be taken down soon.

The article goes on to explain that the intention is not only to eliminate nuisance homes but it is hoped that the elimination of these homes will actually help the economy.  “Razing houses, officials say, will increase competition for the remaining homes, driving up real estate values.  That in turn, will make it easier for homeowners to refinance to cheaper loans, freeing up spending and boosting consumer confidence,” states Time.

“We are excited that Time Magazine chose to feature Lakewood and what we are doing with our Housing Initiative.  We are effectively implementing a comprehensive plan for dealing with these difficult properties and it is starting to show results,” stated Mayor Mike Summers.  “Our first goal is to stabilize a neighborhood by removing a nuisance.  Secondly, we hope to improve the value of our housing stock.”