Mark Oprea
Mayor Justin Bibb spoke with former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros at the Cleveland Foundation on Monday about what City Hall could do if the Trump administration cuts all of its housing-related funds. “But in chaos,” Bibb said, “there’s always opportunity.”
Last month, Mayor Justin Bibb wrote a letter to 63 local nonprofits and community development corporations urging them to hold off on major expenditures for the time being.
The reason was tied to President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, the office he’s charged with cutting federal spending.
Major cuts to the Department of Housing & Urban Development, Bibb worried, could be included.
“The Trump administration’s policies have created chaos across the country and weakened the social safety net,” the letter read. “And this, not any policy from the city or other organization, has put us in the challenging place we find ourselves in.”
Bibb echoed that worry Monday morning, during a one-on-one with former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros in the middle of a gathering of the National Housing Crisis Task Force, of which Bibb is co-chair.
Cisneros, who worked under President Bill Clinton and championed public housing, picked Bibb’s brain during what seems like crunch time from City Hall’s perspective: figuring out how exactly to maintain and grow Cleveland’s housing stock amid an era where the White House just doesn’t seem to care. Specifically, $30 million the city has received annually for development could be less, or $0.
“We got to be innovative, we’ve got to find a way to make it work,” Bibb told Cisneros. “As we see this destruction of our prior business model, the prior way states and cities work, the intergovernmental system.”
“But in chaos,” Bibb added, “there’s always opportunity.”
The National Housing Crisis Task Force was created last year as a think tank charged with drumming up good ideas to handle the country’s problems building affordable housing, whether it be in Atlanta, Cleveland, Denver or St. Louis.
In the first part of its State and Local Housing Action Plan, released in March, the writers worry that Trump’s HUD, under Secretary Scott Turner, will eliminate Fair Housing protections; balloon construction costs; curtail Section 8 voucher support; and do away, for the most part, with federal tax credits that help kick off low-income housing projects.
“This would amount to the greatest change in the U.S. housing ecosystem since the 1930s,” the writers say.
It comes amid a semi-stalled world of construction for Cleveland, best represented in the past few years by its successes—a major makeover of public housing with Woodhill Homes; cranes in the air downtown for apartments at Ten60 Bolivar, Skyline 776 and The Lumen.
In the conversation Monday, Bibb responded clearly and pointedly to Cisneros’ alarm, feeling that absent federal dollars placed more responsibility than ever on local institutions, donors and a restructuring of priorities within City Hall.
Even if that means relative nightmares for a progressive mayor: closing CDCs, letting workers go.
“When you wake up in the middle of the night, and you think, ‘What am I going to do?’” Cisneros asked Bibb. “What’s the first thing that comes to mind?”
“It’s philanthropy, it’s our banking partners,” Bibb said. “But even as I talk to foundation leaders, their balance sheets aren’t big enough to solve for a lack of funding from the federal government.”
Fixes may be in that Action Plan, Bibb said.
Either in a land value tax meant to prompt owners to build on empty lots; in okaying smaller accessory dwelling units, or granny flats, on residential sites; or in housing command centers, like Home For Every Neighbor, which, since last August, has paid for 12 months of rent for 154 formerly-homeless Clevelanders.
And, despite DOGE’s probable slimming of HUD dollars for cities like Cleveland, Bibb kept to his idealism. He wants to see 5,000 modular homes built across the city by 2035, along with 3,000 units of affordable housing by 2030.
All which will depend on both the elusive demands (or not) of the market, and whether or not the city can make the process a lot easier, Bibb said.
“I wish I had ten times more incentives and tools at City Hall to create more housing in our community,” he said. “Unfortunately, that’s not the case.”
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