Cleveland

Neighborhoods

Little Italy, located on the city's eastern border with Cleveland Heights, is a thriving Italian neighborhood that in recent years has become an arts center. On the near east side, just to the north of midtown, is a small Chinatown. On the northeast side is the Slavic Village, and to the east is Hough, a largely African American neighborhood that was the site of violent riots during the Civil Rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

The Van Sweringen brothers, real estate developers, purchased from a community of Shakers (the devout religious sect) a large tract of land about 16 kilometers (ten miles) east of Public Square. This land became the community of Shaker Heights, the first planned suburban community in the nation. To lure Cleveland's new and growing middle and upper classes into their community, the Van Sweringens bought a rail line and converted it to a commuter rail connecting their land with a downtown station they built. In 1996, the city received grants and loans of $22.6 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to help build 400 new homes and renovate 65 homes in the Central neighborhood, a residential, industrial sector just east of the downtown.

In 1994, the cost of housing in Cleveland was the second lowest among large cities in the country. In the greater Cleveland area, the average price for a single family home in 1994 was $104,400, compared to $161,600 nationally. Among the 18 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, Cleveland residents also had the lowest average mortgage payments.

In 1989, the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless was established to provide housing for the estimated 12,000 homeless people in the greater Cleveland area.