America Needs a New Housing Playbook. Cleveland is Building One.

Eighteen years after becoming ground zero for the foreclosure crisis, Cleveland is building a new model that connects housing, jobs, and neighborhood growth.

Having a home is about stability. I know this firsthand from seeing it through the lens of my grandparents.

When they came north to Cleveland from the segregated South, home became more than a place to live. It was where our family gathered, where lifelong memories were made, and where the foundation for a better future was built. Like so many Americans, they believed homeownership could create the kind of wealth and opportunity that gets passed from one generation to the next.

But for far too many in our city and our nation, that dream is being deferred.

During the Great Recession of 2008, Cleveland was ground zero of the foreclosure crisis. Neighborhoods collapsed. Blocks went dark. And generations of wealth were destroyed while entire communities were left to rebuild on their own.

Today, America faces a different housing challenge. Families are struggling to find homes they can afford, while cities wrestle with rising costs, outdated systems, and too little housing supply.

Yet the lesson Cleveland learned remains the same: housing cannot be treated as a singular issue.

Housing is connected to economic opportunity, infrastructure, workforce development, and neighborhood stability. If we want different outcomes, we must redesign the systems that shape development itself.

That is exactly what we are doing in Cleveland.

The Housing Innovation District is not just a housing policy. It is a neighborhood-focused strategy designed to modernize how city government supports growth, reduces barriers to development, and ensures residents benefit from the investment happening around them.

We are starting in neighborhoods that have waited too long for that investment to arrive.

For generations, Black neighborhoods like Hough, Central, and St. Clair-Superior have carried Cleveland forward while being systematically denied the investment they deserved. Through redlining, discriminatory lending practices, and decades of public and private disinvestment, wealth was extracted from these communities instead of being built from within.

These outcomes were not accidental. They were the result of policy choices.

The Housing Innovation District begins with a simple belief: neighborhoods that were intentionally excluded from opportunity should be first in line to benefit from it.

The housing crisis is not only about supply. It is about whether local governments are willing to change the systems that determine how growth happens.

For Cleveland, that begins with modernizing the rules that govern growth. Through form-based code, we will make it easier to build housing that fits neighborhood character while supporting walkable streets, mixed-use corridors, and the kind of density that strengthens communities rather than disrupts them.

Just as importantly, building housing must become faster and less expensive. By reducing permitting costs and introducing pre-approved housing plans, we are removing barriers that too often delay projects before they ever break ground.

Housing growth should also be paired with infrastructure investment. Through a targeted tax increment financing district, future growth will help fund streets, sidewalks, utilities, parks, and public spaces.

We are also embracing innovation in how we build housing. By pairing modular construction with targeted rehabilitation and storefront improvements, we are jump-starting the market to support scalability.

Together, these tools are designed to do more than increase our housing stock. They are designed to build stronger neighborhoods.

And this effort is not happening in isolation.

Across this corridor, more than $368 million in transformational projects are already underway, including community hubs, mobility improvements, neighborhood infrastructure investments, and lakefront development.

At the center is the newly unveiled Cleveland Midline, a 350-acre business park and greenway projected to support more than 2,500 good-paying jobs while reconnecting neighborhoods that were historically cut off from opportunity.

Cleveland is one of the only cities in the country intentionally connecting an ambitious housing policy to an industrial policy.

We are building a future where new housing, new jobs, and new investment move together. And where the residents who kept faith in these neighborhoods can benefit from the growth they helped make possible.

I know these blocks because I’ve walked them. I’ve knocked on doors and attended church with the families who stayed in these neighborhoods when others left.

They don’t need just another plan; they need results. The Housing Innovation District is being built to do just that.

Our city knows the cost of a broken housing system. That’s why we’re determined to help build a better one.