We have to solve the property problem

If ever a city needed to get creative fast, it’s Cleveland. We need some top legal, financial and business minds to lock themselves in a conference room with proven idea people and not come out until they have a workable strategy for untangling Cleveland from the poisonous spider’s web of mass home abandonment and foreclosure described in yesterday’s New York Times Magazine story .

I’m thinking a streamlined legal process. Nimble public-private partnerships.  Mandatory jail time for nonresident property owners – be they bankers, mortgage brokers, developers or landlords – who neglect their properties and cheat  their buyers and renters. Heavy damages, too, so there’d be money for the city to repair or demolish those houses. And incentives for responsible people to buy, fix up, and live for a long time in, the salvageable homes.

This real-estate disaster is Cleveland’s Bay of Pigs, its Black Plague, its Apocalypse. And it hasn’t descended on us from out of the blue – it started a long time ago and is simply getting much worse quickly. For decades, our leaders haven’t done enough. And now, there isn’t going to be much of a city left if we don’t hurry.

So I’m not kidding: If Cleveland’s and Cuyhoga County’s political, business, law and creative leadership will do this much - select and invite the best minds from these national sectors - I’ll book the room and pay for all the pizza. Cleveland’s strangling in its own sticky mess. Let’s set it free.