Chuck Hoven interview, 09 June 2007

Abstract

In this 2007 interview, 51 year old Chuck Hoven, a life long resident of the west side of Cleveland, and managing editor for the Cleveland Plain Press, talks about the neighborhoods of the west side of Cleveland in which his family (his father was of German descent; his mother of Lebanese) has lived since the 1860s. He also talks about the history of the Cleveland Plain Press, a west side community newspaper, and articles that it published about some controversial events in Cleveland since the 1970s, including the controversy involving I-90 and the Zone Recreation Center and court-ordered busing. Mr. Hoven also discusses his community involvement in a number of different organizations, including one in which he was involved while a student at CSU, which helped to prepare Cleveland children for attendance at magnet schools. Mr. Hoven also talks generally about the decline of Cleveland in general, and the Detroit Shoreway area in particular, over the course of his life. In addition to busing issues, he also talks about the proposed closing of west side Catholic Churches by the Diocese, and other problems associated with the precipitous decline in Cleveland's urban population.

Interviewee

Hoven, Chuck (interviewee)

Interviewer

Souther, Mark (interviewer)

Project

Detroit Shoreway

Date

6-9-2007

Document Type

Oral History

Duration

68 minutes

Recommended Citation

"Chuck Hoven interview, 09 June 2007" (2007). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 955023_999036.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/869

Related Resources

Detroit Shoreway @ Cleveland Voices

Transcript

Mark Souther [00:00:00] Interview. Today is June 9, 2007. My name is Mark Souther and I am here at the Gordon Square Arcade in Detroit Shoreway this morning interviewing Mr. Chuck Hoven who was... is or was a reporter for the Plain Press?

Chuck Hoven [00:00:18] I'm the managing editor currently at Plain Press, but I guess I've been a reporter and a photographer and newspaper delivery person or whatever for the Plain Press since I started as a volunteer in about '81 I think with the Plain Press and then came on staff in about '88.

Mark Souther [00:00:44] Where and when were you born?

Chuck Hoven [00:00:44] I was born in a actually right here in this neighboring St. John's Hospital in 1956, November 9th, 1956. I grew up on 84th Street, just south of Clark, which is kind of just a little outside Detroit Shoreway service area right now. I guess it's officially like the West Boulevard neighborhood, but that's where I still live, there at my parents and my grandparents' house. So I'm still there. My mother's family moved to 85th Street near Madison in the mid-thirties, so there's [inaudible]. My dad's family is more in the West Boulevard neighborhood for years. He moved around and they finally bought the house I'm in I think right at the beginning of World War II.

Mark Souther [00:01:47] In World War II?

Chuck Hoven [00:01:52] Yeah, I think he was like 18 and he went off to war and they bought the house right before he left and came back to it. But he had... They had always... They had been renting for a number of years before that, and that was their first house and he never wanted to give that up after he had paid for it. He was in the insurance business and they started redlining the neighborhood and wanted him to move to the suburbs because they don't want to sell in Cleveland anymore, and he he said, no, my house is paid for. And he took it. I think he got a dollar a day pension for a year, and and he was unemployed for a couple of years. It took him a while to get another job, but he didn't want to sell his house.

Mark Souther [00:02:36] So the insurance company was pressuring him, you said?

Chuck Hoven [00:02:38] Yeah, it was nationwide. Yeah. During the time, I think it was probably maybe around 1970, they were tearing down houses for I-90 and people were burning their houses to collect insurance. And in Cleveland, it was generally on the downspin. But this neighborhood, in particular, was suffering from... They were just knocking down houses left and right for 90 and that was a big... I think that was a big reason why the insurance company wanted to get out.

Mark Souther [00:03:22] So when you say redline you are speaking in the sense of because of the arson rather than because of racial changes because that was...

Chuck Hoven [00:03:28] Yeah, I think it was. Oh, I don't know how do you say it. They just didn't want to sell in the city. And I think it was auto insurance. It was homeowners' insurance, but they wanted to sell on the suburban market. So maybe it was a socio-economic thing, but it was also I think the freeway had a big deal to do with it. But for whatever reasons, they had put a line around the entire city and they didn't want to sell. They told them they don't want to sell any more policies in the city. And that was all his customers.

Mark Souther [00:04:01] What company is this?

Chuck Hoven [00:04:03] Nationwide.

Mark Souther [00:04:09] When I-90 was first even planned, how old were you when you first learned that I-90 was going to go through this general neighborhood?

Chuck Hoven [00:04:14] Well, I think I have an old newspaper clipping from Mercedes Cotner in 1962. I think she said the freeway would go through her ward over her dead body. I have that somewhere at home. And she was the councilperson [of what] I think was old Ward 2 at the time. But that's what currently Jay Westbrook is the councilperson of that ward, so it's 18 now. But of course, it did go through her ward and she became council clerk I think and was there for many years, but that... I was maybe 10 years old in '66 when I actually benefited from the freeway because they took the house of one of the newspaper delivery people and I got a job with the Cleveland Press as a paperboy and my cousin Greg was the paperboy on our street. He told me about it and I went down and met with the paper guy who they they used to hang out at Tony's Diner, which was on 90th 90, where I mean, where 90th Street and where Lorain and Clark come together. It comes to a V, and Tony's restaurant was this big, you know, it's kind of just regular food but the paper guys used to hang out there with their Press trucks after they finished delivery. You could get your spare papers there. So, I went down, met with the guy and got a route. My route was on Grace and Lorain between 80th and 73rd, the initial route and then eventually as more and more houses got knocked down. My brothers and my sister and I, we had this territory from 73rd to 90th between Clark and Lorain, and I think initially I had maybe 80 customers in that little area. Some of those houses are still there on part. A little part of Grace is left, and a little part of, well, all of Lorain from 80th to 73rd is still there, but we had houses on Hope and on Clark that are I mean, all this area is gone that it's just gone where the freeway is now. So that was, I don't know, we... You knew people when you saw their houses get knocked down. And I think one experience we had when we were kids, we wanted to preserve a real nice flat piece of sandstone that was somebody's big sidewalk in front of their house. And we took some porch rails that were around and we were rolling this thing maybe about six blocks because we were trying to get it to my backyard. We're gonna make a nice flat basketball court. [laughs] And so, we got to, I think, almost the corner of my street and some cops came and they said we had to leave it there. We said, well, they're just going to smash it. And they said, well, somebody called, so you have to... So that was a real, you know, experience with, you know, just the waste that the whole thing. You know, because everything was getting knocked down or getting torched or, you know, when people moved out and we were just, you know, trying to do a little recycling, I guess. [laughs]

Mark Souther [00:07:57] Yeah.

Chuck Hoven [00:07:59] But so we never did learn how to dribble properly because our court was all rocks. [laughs] But we could shoot, but we never could. We never did get a flat court. But what else do I remember about that? I think that led to the freeway tearing down. I don't know when they actually completed it. I'm trying to remember, it was probably the late '70s and I think we had our... I had the paper route until all the way through high school so I graduated in '75 from Ignatius High School. So that whole period was freeway building in that. You know, I don't know how much that probably affected other neighbors. I know it affected St. Colman's in this neighborhood heavily because of loss of population. My parish was Ignatius. We were right on the boundary between Colman's and Ignatius on 84th and half the kids went to Ignatius and half to Colman's that were in Catholic schools, but both parishes were pretty much devastated. I mean, when I was younger, Ignatius was the largest parish in the city. We got kicked out of the CYO because we had one like 10 years and we're all so we had our own league with about... They still have their own leagues there, but they're recruiting from all over the city now. But we had our own football and basketball league with like eight teams. And just because the school was so large in the masses would go on. There'd be. There is an upstairs church and a downstairs church, and they'd have simultaneous masses from like 9:00 till noon in both churches and I think they probably each hold about 500 people or something.

Mark Souther [00:10:14] So, within one church or one church school you would have all the basketball teams coming from within a single school playing each other?

Chuck Hoven [00:10:21] Well, and some of them were kids that... We had like kids that were from the neighborhood also could join. So there... It was always that way because they kind of expect like kids that would go to Sunday school, they went to public school, but they were welcome in that league. So it was always that way once they formed their own league. So it was... And then we would play at Halloran Park or at, well, I guess all the games were up, up by Halloran Park and they'd practice at Jasper Field or Halloran Park. So that was just part of... But that's, you know, that's all west of Detroit Shoreway. I don't know. I should probably. I don't know how far back you want to go. Some of my mother's family, like I said, they moved on to 85th Street near Mad... [Madison]. Well, actually they moved to.. .They had moved to one of the side streets there in Tompkins first and then they—my aunt, my mother's oldest sister—worked at Lamson & Sessions which is MarshAllan which they're tearing down as we speak, I think, on 85th and Madison. So that was a big employer. It was a nut and screw thing—I guess they just put nuts on screws all day [laughs]—but she worked there forty-eight years and I think sometimes my mom was in the sixth grade and they were in St. Pat's Parish and they lived down on Bailey or something and they moved up to Tompkins and which is right off 85th Street here. And the... I think my mom walked back to St. Pat's with her younger brother for a year to finish that school year, and then they went to Ignatius on Boulevard and Lorain, which my dad was in the same class as her in the seventh grade up there. So it was 7th and 8th grade... And then they met years later. My dad used to ride his bike past her house on his way to a factory on Lorain where they made—I mean, on Madison—where they made engines. He used to hit it with a sledgehammer. He used to hit the engines as they come off the line or something [laughs] but made auto engines or truck engines, I think. But her family was nine kids. Shalala was my mom's last name and they were Lebanese. My dad was German, Dutch, French. I don't know. And his family was in Cleveland a very long time. They were... They had probably sometime in the mid-1800s, came here and his dad was a postal worker. I think at one time they owned, you know, rental properties and things but they... I think the Depression or something along the line, they lost them all because people couldn't pay rent at some point and so my dad's family had always rented until they bought that house. His dad was a postal worker. And my mom's family, they came from Pennsylvania. And I think her father's work was a candymaker there. And when they came here, I think initially they... He worked in the steel mill. I think all the old... her older brothers worked various places and her older sister—it's kind of an interesting story—she was, I think, 15 and she got a fake I.D. from her cousin in Pennsylvania. Got her I.D. I think her name was Wilmina or something. So she got a job at Lamson & Sessions and her whole career there, 48 years, they called her Billie because she had her [card]... Her name was Ida, but she had her cousin's I.D. when she started work there [laughs] and I mean, eventually she straightened it out, but they still called her Billie. But she... I think when she would walk down—nobody had a car then when they first... that was in the mid-thirties—and she walked down to Lamson & Sessions. And I think on our way down there, they she walked past the house that was for sale. And then eventually bought their first house on 85th, which I think is, you know, about pretty close to Madison. Not too far. I think it's 2094, something like that. But they had nine kids and her oldest brother is was Jim Shalala whose twin daughters, one of them is Donna Shalala who's famous. Now she's President of the University of Miami now. But so that whole family was... They lost two brothers in World War II, which just kind of a thing with the whole family, because all of us are named with parts of [laughs] one of the brothers' names, all the boys in the family. So I think I'm trying to remember what else that my mom told me about that neighborhood. I think there was a Stork Theater on the corner of 85th and Lorain, which was a big, big deal, though. Yeah. I guess people went to the movies all the time. And then I think going down Lorain. I remember riding around with my mom when she was... She had Alzheimer's before she died. But she would just say things. And one thing she said was, oh, we'd pass where Lorain Surgical is at 65th and Lorain, and she said, Baby doctor. Who would think the baby doctor would have an office up the stairs? So that was where our doctor's office was. Doctor Fallon, I think, who was up the stairs, and she... [laughs] She had four kids. She had to go up the stairs when she was pregnant. So she remembered that. And I think our dentist, which was Dr. Fallon's brother, was in the same building. So that's been a kind of a medical building for a long time. And I don't know. I think the current owners I don't know if they're related or not, I'd have to ask them. They're advertisers with the Plain Press. I could...

Mark Souther [00:18:08] Speaking of the Plain Press, let's jump forward again to when you were on the staff. Well, you said you volunteered for seven years or so before you were on staff. Were you a contributing writer? Is that what you?

Chuck Hoven [00:18:20] Yeah, I started out I was, I think I was in grad school at Cleveland State and a friend of mine, I'd gone to grade school with Jimmy Reddy. He is telling me about this. They're restarting this newspaper on the Near West Side. And while I always enjoyed reading small publication like what we're talking about Roldo's Point of View at the time, I think and and I said why I'd like to get involved with something like that. So that's how the conversation started. And he said, well, they're restarting this paper. And I was like tutoring kids at the time and at Cleveland State and going to school. And I didn't have a lot of time to write. But this Lisa Oppenheim was the editor at the time and her and Rosalyn Block, as a neighborhood person, got together and wrote a grant to the Gund Foundation. They got like three years funding. They had about like probably half of what they asked for or a quarter what they asked for. [laughs] So it was a shoestring operation.

Mark Souther [00:19:29] Why were they... Excuse me. Why were they restarting the paper?

Chuck Hoven [00:19:31] The paper went out like in the late '70s it went out of... It just folded.

Mark Souther [00:19:39] And when did it start?

Chuck Hoven [00:19:41] Started in '71 and a group of neighborhood activists. And the reason they called it the Plain Press was kind of a combination between the Plain Dealer and the Cleveland Press. So it was supposed to be this alternative to the major media. And they... A lot of... Some of the people that were heavily involved were like Chris Warren and Larry Bresler were heavily involved for most of that time period, either as writers or putting the paper out or driving it to the printer thing.

Mark Souther [00:20:24] Were there any particular issues that motivated them to start the Press, or was it more of an issue of trying to just purely provide an alternative to the major newspapers?

Chuck Hoven [00:20:37] Well, I think I think there were a lot of people that were upset that neighborhood issues weren't getting covered. And I think if you look, I brought a scrapbook here, but some of the issues were like rats or glue sniffing or things of the time that [were] neighborhood block club issues. And I think both Chris and Larry and some of the other folks that are involved came here as VISTA workers or they were involved with some neighborhood organization doing some kind of project. I think they were both college students that were in the neighborhood. And so they became heavily involved that way. And there are a lot of neighborhood residents that he had issues too. And it just a lot of the issues, I think early on centered around youth youth issues and youth problems because they had a youth component. Actually, I think mandated in the bylaws ahead early on that there is some kind of youth involvement. But over... I guess it was just always funding was always an issue and trying and in fact, early on they tried to get printers to donate. They weren't going to have any advertising. They were idealists. And that didn't last very long. But but they were getting printers to donate different issues or getting sponsors. I think once they had the police union sponsored and that only lasted an issue or so until some police shot somebody or something and they reported on it and they lost their funding. So were different issues like that over time. And I left a copy of a scrapbook we did for our 20th anniversary in '91 with Nelson. So it's got some of the. We just kind of cut and pasted different articles. So kind of reflective of of so you can look at that. Some of some of the things from this neighborhood that are in there, the building of the senior high rise Villa Mercedes is in there. And I think if you look at the rec., the battle for the rec. center. There's a real interesting story has to do with I-90 because Zone was built on the hub that was supposed to take 90 to the Shoreway. And that was one victory. People actually stopped the freeway from devastating the rest of the Near West Side.

Mark Souther [00:23:46] Can you tell me more about that? There was one reference to that but I am very unfamiliar with it.

Chuck Hoven [00:23:46] Well, it ended up being empty land that was owned by the state. And I think the battle I think in '77, they actually got some money because Kucinich made it a campaign promise and they got like a million and a half to figure out where they're going to build a rec. Center and do. And I think it still took into several more administrations before it actually got built some time.

Mark Souther [00:24:25] Before that. I am interested in especially in the battle that stopped it. Who was involved?

Chuck Hoven [00:24:26] Oh. That was. Yeah, that was before. I think we could probably look back in the Plain Press archives and find that. But I think it was a combination of neighborhood residents and some of the council people. And I think it may. Who knows if it had, you know, funding implications or what. But I think part of it was the historic churches that would have been you had Stephen's and Pat's in the. I'm not sure what the actual path was. But but I think that was that that was part of it.

Mark Souther [00:25:10] Was it supposed to be a connector between 90 and Shoreway or was it supposed to actually carry 90 to the Shoreway and then take 90 through across the river...

Chuck Hoven [00:25:12] Yeah and what not. All I know is that that was like a land that they already bought for that purpose to connect. I guess it would connect the two and that that was stopped that I you know, I've just been told this by other people who know and I think we have some of the stories more about organizing for the rec. center than about actually... I think the stopping of it occurred before the Plain Press. I think because it is probably sometime in the '60s.

Mark Souther [00:25:54] What about in the '70s and '80s? What. What effect would you say the interstate had on... Well for one thing suburbanization. Like the flock to the suburbs.

Chuck Hoven [00:26:09] Well, I think just physically, the people that lost their houses, a lot of them did go to the suburbs. They had no place to go. They couldn't get replacement value for there. They got appraised value for their houses, so they had enough to make a down payment. It was a hardship. But the families, a lot of them moved moved out of the city. Kind of in and then once the freeway was built, of course, it made it easier for more people to, you know, still work in the city and go out. But but I don't know how many. I've heard one hundred thousand people actually lost their homes, but I don't, you know. I can't document that. But I know on my paper route that I had like 80 customers, if you figure those were bigger households at the time and my brothers' had, like 60 initially. And that was half of what was in that. And that was just a space from 73rd to 90 in between Lorain and Clark that became freeway in some of those households are still left, but most of them are gone. So you're talking. I don't know. You know, in just in that little space there. I don't know how many people were there, but, you know, several blocks of people. You feel. You think maybe five hundred people in the households that we had on our route and maybe double that. And you multiply that by how many miles this freeway that was maybe a quarter mile space. So maybe more half-mile space. But yeah.

Mark Souther [00:27:59] [inaudible]

Chuck Hoven [00:28:00] Yeah, it is a lot of people, a lot of households were just physically removed. And then if you think not just 90, then you got a little little chunks of 71 in the city. And and then they were they knocked down houses for what is now 176, which they didn't complete until just recently. So all that stuff was just taken out. And the east side wasn't impacted as much as the west side. But as far as exodus from the west side, I think a lot of those people or families would still be in Cleveland if the freeway wasn't built. So and then, of course, the freeway makes life easier for everybody. You can get places fast, but at the same time, it devastated your commercial strips and your your shopping areas. We like when I was a kid, we my mom would take us places walking because we go down to... well, Fisher's was about somewhere on Lorain, about 89th. And I think there was a pharmacy across the street, a little bakery, all that. And then Tony's Diner of course. So you could go and walk and do your grocery shopping and come home with, you know, a little pushcart and kids in tow and. Yeah. In the course, well the Lorain Branch library's still there but we would walk. There were streets... I think we'd go down to 82nd and Clark. There was a light and we are cross. Of course, all that is gone now. There's no 82nd and Clark. But there. Yeah. We'd walk across over to the library, which has been an institution for generations. I mean, when my mom was growing up, that was there. We went to the summer reading club. I forget the woman's name. I think Miss [unintelligible]. There was a woman that was there for years and years as well. That was a big institution.

Mark Souther [00:30:11] What about. Do you remember any organizing going on and tried to convince the freeway from one of those certain areas on the west side or was there or did the people essentially lie down?

Chuck Hoven [00:30:26] Well, like I had said, Mercedes Cotner, who was very powerful councilperson. She tried to oppose it and was unsuccessful.

Mark Souther [00:30:38] What about from the grassroots?

Chuck Hoven [00:30:38] That would have been before my you know, before my time. I. I know that someone stopped that spur. And I don't know if it was a grassroots thing or of if it came from above. But that that little piece, I think the thing that everybody knows about is what happened on the east side with Kathy Barber and folks at Save Shaker Lakes. But there was I think there was some... There must have been something on the Near West Side, too. But I'd have to I could look in our archives, but I think it predates the Plain Press because we were in '71, that would have probably happened sometime in the '60s. And... But, you know, Mercedes Cotner just passed away a little little a few years back. But I don't... I'm trying to think who would remember. So maybe as you're interviewing, you'll find some of the old-timers that that remember. But there were the battles that occurred afterwards, I think are some of those are recorded in the Plain Press as far as making use of that land for a rec. center. And I think Councilman Zone, who's Matt's father, has the center named after him. So I'm sure he was instrumental in some of that, but there were I think the article I looked at and our scrapbook had a some kind of youth ministers involved in youth organizing was head of a committee, and there were other people in the neighborhood that were heavily involved in in getting that piece of land secured and made into a rec. center. And then they formed a neighborhood advisory board for the for his own rec. and it became the most used rec. center in the city. So it was really needed. Clark Rec., which is really around the corner, but it's on a different east west route, yet it is also very heavily used rec. centers. We have two rec. centers they're real close to each other. But Clark doesn't have nearly the capacity as Zone, but this city, of course, has neglected Zone over the years. And I think of the Voinovich administration, they laid off all their skilled tradespeople and they kind of let the whole thing deteriorate inside. The grounds, they've done a lot of work on the grounds outside are real nice. I think that's become part of this whole Eco-Village thing that centered around that that area.

Mark Souther [00:33:31] What are. What are some of the other issues that you remember I guess in the 1980s, what would have been the key issues in this neighborhood?

Chuck Hoven [00:33:37] In Detroit Shoreway? Well, I think the key to what happened is the exodus of factories. Detroit Shoreway is like... It [has] always been an employment place where people could probably walk to work or in. You saw a massive exodus. I think, you know, the '70s and early '80s, the factories just started closing or burning down. I remember a 4th of July fire, one paint factory just burned to the ground. And I think they said the whole west side would have been evacuated. If the wind had blown the other way, it blew out to the lake, fortunately, but there is one factory after another. And I think if you look part of the organizing in the neighborhood and I think what Our Lady of Mount Carmel was so a lot of foresight and Detroit Shoreway was buying up these old factories and making them into housing. I guess they foresaw that factories were just coming back. I think everybody hoped that they would because that was the big employment. I think another issue, of course, with the factories early on, I remember David Beach had interviewed the priest at Our Lady of Mount Carmel and he had told me he thought there was an unusually high incidence of cancer in the neighborhood. That was resol... There was pollution with the factories, of course, you know, you had the Eveready battery plant down there yet a lot of paint and chemical type factories in along Detroit Avenue. I think Dancyger's was one of the last factories to close. I think probably had maybe three shifts of 60 people that would. They made labels or did you know just something you wouldn't think of was a big employer? But that's the restaurants like City Grill and Perry's that used to be there. Those raw places that thrived because of these factories, people work before or after work. They go for a drink, go eat breakfast or whatever. And that whole this whole neighborhood really depended on all those factories. You know, I don't think Detroit Avenue has really recovered. You see all the vacancies. I mean, there's some thriving businesses, but not to the extent when you had all the factory workers, people were employed. So poverty went dramatically up. If you look, I think we have some old articles. I think from... I think from like '80 to '90 in Detroit Shoreway. You had an increase of... Poverty went up to like 49 percent. I think it had been maybe a third before it in the beginning of the decade and maybe lower in. I think there are like three or four thousand like thirty-five hundred more people were in poverty than at the beginning of the decade. Plus you probably had lost population. So I don't know what the percentage was at the beginning of the decade. But I just read it. So it was like 49 percent poverty and 90 at the end of that. So that was the loss of factory jobs and the increase in poverty was, I think, the big difference in that time period.

Mark Souther [00:37:37] What has affected the mentality and well about Cleveland? I'm thinking about people in this neighborhood and the west side in general the loss of industry. This idea of people seeing people leave for the suburbs or maybe leave completely. What did that do to the mentality about Cleveland? Do you remember anything specific about the '70s and/or the '80s?

Chuck Hoven [00:38:02] Well, you know that the joke with people who had lost their jobs in the steel mills and moved out. I know my cousins lived over on 95th and they all... about eight kids in the family. They've all moved there all in Houston now or a lot of them are. They're scattered around. But they used to kid me, you know, Cleveland, last one out, turn out the lights because you know, they didn't see any future here. That's. People were wrong. They were without jobs. It was hard for people to stay. The people that did stay. I think there is a lot of spirit of organizing and trying to save. And I think this particular neighborhood, you know, had a lot of vision in terms of trying to get senior citizens close to the church in terms of Lady of Mount Carmel and the organizing around housing. Even today, they look, I think, something very progressive in the last few years in terms of rehabbing a lot of very low-income housing in some of these these buildings where people can can, you know, get something affordable, which a lot of neighborhoods. Their focus is a more upscale housing. I think there's a lot of that here as well along the lakefront and the ever ready thing. But keeping that balance is really important. I think they they've done a good job in. But how do you sustain that without jobs? And the other thing is the educational system. It's really a competing thing because you give tax abatements to attract the housings and you're killing your schools. And despite the Cleveland State study, which I don't give very much credit that says, well, 15 years out, you're going to show a benefit, but you have... You buy one teacher now. You reduce class sizes. You buy 10 teachers or 30 teachers, even if you know only 25 percent of those houses. So it's a real tradeoff and it's a dilemma. Do you say how do you save your schools at the same time, save your housing stock? And that's been I mean, housing is always one in Cleveland. I mean, of course, our school system now is is really bad. You know, I mean, you saw the paper the other day with, what, 49 percent of the. And that's just the kids that made it to the 12th grade or 43. You know, it's 43 percent haven't passed the state test and you know, we're we're. That's the other thing that I think this neighborhood did in terms of Lady of Mount Carmel. They have an excellent school and they have probably one of the best schools in the county. I remember interviewing the principal there and she was telling me one of their students had this was when they were transitioning to year-round. I guess they don't call it year-round school, but it's pretty much they don't have a summer traditional summer break. They have several breaks during the year. Bu

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