Cheap Homes, Meet New Immigrants

"[R]eclaiming this housing requires a family willing to live in it. To many Americans, taking one of these homes and investing the sweat equity to bring them back to their former glory (or even basic functionality), just isn’t worth it, or seems untenable. But perhaps we aren’t looking far enough for potential residents.

Given the amount of reusable buildings materials that already gets dumped, the idea of throwing away housing that could be renovated, made energy-efficient, and saved from landfill is highly problematic.

Of the 1.9 billion children in the developing world, 640 million are without adequate shelter (that’s one in three), and 400 million have no access to safe water (one in five). Surely, neighborhoods like Cleveland’s Slavic Village or Buffalo’s Broadway-Fillmore neighborhoods could be redeveloped into communities that again offer newcomers hope."