Derelict Paradise: Homelessness and Urban Development in Cleveland, Ohio

by Daniel R. Kerr

Seeking answers to the question, "Who benefits from homelessness?" this book takes the reader on a sweeping tour of Cleveland's history from the late nineteenth-century through the early twenty-first. Daniel Kerr shows that homelessness has deep roots in the shifting ground of urban labor markets, social policy, downtown development, the criminal justice system, and corporate power. Rather than being attributable to the illnesses and inadequacies of the unhoused themselves, it is a product of both structural and political dynamics shaping the city. Kerr locates the origins of today's shelter system in the era that followed the massive railroad rebellions of 1877. From that period through the Great Depression, business and political leaders sought to transform downtown Cleveland to their own advantage. As they focused on bringing business travelers and tourists to the city and beckoned upper-income residents to return to its center, they demolished two downtown working-class neighborhoods and institutionalized a shelter system to contain and control the unhoused and unemployed. The precedents from this period informed the strategies of the post–World War II urban renewal era as the "new urbanism" of the late twentieth century. The efforts of the city's elites have not gone uncontested. Kerr documents a rich history of opposition by people at the margins of whose organized resistance and everyday survival strategies have undermined the grand plans crafted by the powerful and transformed the institutions designed to constrain the lives of the homeless.

Genres: Nonfiction, Urban Planning

312 pages, Paperback

First published February 28, 2011

Reviews

[Sophia Cunningham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Giving this 5 stars bc I really can’t overstate how important and eye opening it is BUT I also found it hard to read 😭😭 might be a me problem tho, haven’t been in school for a while now

[Pete · Rating 4 out of 5]

really filled in some blanks in my understanding of historical urban policy in cleveland. also makes a fairly convincing argument that homelessness as a concept has consistently been bent to make money as opposed to strict "relief." fascinating to see how govt policy, race, business have collided on this topic. fun fact: george voinovich's family runs/ran a prison architecture firm that got hundreds of millions of dollars of state business while voinovich was governor. i was particularly interested in the social stuff on shanty towns in the depression (one hobo had a solarium in his shanty, another guy had a summer house and a winter house). additional fun fact: "apple selling" was viewed as a social plague on the streets of cleveland during the depression.

this is a little dry in places, but very readable for academic history. detracting one point because there's a little paranoid streak running through the book, as if there was a grand conspiracy inside of market forces as opposed to just a the very unfortunate reality that a capitalist system punishes people without money the hardest.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic read about Cleveland's long struggle with equality, urban [and suburban] development, social welfare and other policies and reform efforts.

Cleveland, you're a hot mess! But I still love my home town.

[Keith Schnell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an outstanding book, albeit a dry and academic one. Although it's not, despite its short 250-page length, a book that you can just skim through, if you have even a little background or interest in municipal politics or urban planning it has insights on almost every page. Furthermore, while Derelict Paradise is theoretically focused on the broader interrelationship of so-called urban renewal projects with both homelessness and with frequently racist city administrations in the Midwestern United States in the 20th Century, Daniel Kerr has also managed to write, almost incidentally, an exceptionally detailed political and economic history of Cleveland during the period 1877-2008; bookended, as it were, by two Great Recessions.

The historical aspect is the most fascinating. If you've ever driven through Cleveland, especially the near East side - the Innerbelt, Euclid Ave. area, Kinsman/Central/Buckeye-Shaker, looking at the enormous vacant blocks, the abandoned factories, the surface parking lots downtown, and wondered to yourself, "what happened, how did it get like this," then this book provides the answers. The extent to which the Downtown business class, working with Federal "urban renewal" money and modernist architects, notably I. M. Pei, remade the city, frequently to its immediate detriment, in a misguided and myopic attempt to separate people that they deemed to be "undesirable" from the central business district, is really impossible to understand from a modern perspective. The evidence simply isn't there anymore - burned down or bulldozed. Having the history of those neighborhoods, and what they used to look like, spelled out, along with a clear description of the extent to which they were deliberately sabotaged, for lack of a better term, is eye-opening. The extent of the change is such that, when the author would reference a location that seemed unfamiliar to me, I would assume that I was mis-remembering the city's configuration and go to Google Maps to check, only to find that my memory was correct, and that the cityscape had simply changed beyond all recognition since, say, 1930.

I wish that every voter in Cuyahoga County could read this book.

[Ryan Bergstrom · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was highly informative of how Cleveland’s urban landscape has developed. Kerr does and excellent job of highlighting the political, economic and financial forces that determine how the city was built. It’s surprised me that many of the beautiful buildings we admire about Cleveland today such as Terminal Tower and some of the Civic buildings downtown were built to destroy “undesirable” districts and how many cycles of “urban renewal” was for the same ends. It tells a story of powerful interests trying to shape and mold Cleveland in their likeness at the expense of working class people; but also how those people valiantly resisted just trying to maintain their way of life.

[fia · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is actually a pretty accessible and extremely thorough, well-researched read. and nobody is telling me cleveland is boring because this is CRAZY y’all. every clevelander should give this a read—damn.

(my only qualm is i wish kerr got deeper into “bag ladies” and different interpersonal relations/communion between different groups of homeless individuals like he did with the infighting of black nationalist groups in the 70s)

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well researched and reported. Detailed & thorough.
Important read for anyone desiring to understand the unhoused people of Cleveland.

[Rusty Tobin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A nice history of the interrelationship of social welfare agencies, government and urban developers in response to homelessness. Kerr uses Cleveland from the late 19th century to the present as a case study to boldly argue that 'homelessness is profitable." Suitable for academic uses but not impenetrable for the average reader.