Suspected Arson Renews Safety Concerns Among Cleveland Residents Over Abandoned Building Hazards

In Cleveland, Ohio, The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports:

• Arson is suspected in a fire that damaged a vacant building on Hayden Avenue on Monday and has left residents and firefighters concerned about the growing problem of fires in abandoned structures. "I would say there is a 98 percent chance this was arson," said Assistant Cleveland Fire Chief Brent Collins. "It's got to be. There's no one [living] here."
  Fourteen fire trucks responded to the three-story apartment building [...].

• Fire officials suspect that some people may be resorting to unlawful tactics to rid residential areas of such eyesores, which are known to serve as squatters' quarters and cover for drug use and dealing. "They are definitely arson fires at vacant houses," Collins said, adding that the Fire Department has placed arson signs throughout the Fleet-Harvard neighborhood. "We are trying to figure out what this is. We don't know if it's insurance fraud or people setting them for eyesores."

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• The city set aside more than $11 million last year to deal with up to 10,000 abandoned houses, many emptied by foreclosure. Most of that money - $7.5 million, or more than three times as much as was budgeted in 2006 - went for demolition.

For more, see Fire on Hayden Avenue probably was arson, official says (Abandoned buildings, fed by foreclosure crisis, make easy targets).

Go here and go here for other posts on vacant homes leaving its mark on neighborhoods.

For other stories on fires & foreclosures, go here , go here , go here, and go here. foreclosure arson whale neighborhood destruction from foreclosures zach