Interstate Highways

By the late 1960’s the implications of the social cost of interstate highways were growing. Service Director to Mayor Carl Stokes, Ralph Tyler, stated, “Cleveland has 50,000 substandard dwelling units which must be replaced or brought up to standard by rehabilitation. It is estimated that present freeway plans for Cleveland would dislocate 20,000 persons, or 8500 families. Most would be Negroes with extra problems of relocation.”[1] It can only be assumed that Tyler’s reference to “extra problems of relocation” may be alluding to real-estate screening by the surrounding suburbs desirous of keeping out blacks. But, this could also be in reference to the fact that many African Americans lived in public housing or were tenants instead of home owners. By 1959 only ten of Cleveland’s African American population was financially capable of moving into “better neighborhoods.”[2]

Cleveland’s housing shortage grew as the number of vacant houses and the number of houses demolished for highways increased. In the case of public housing the state simply demolished what belonged to them without considering the occupants, but built no new public housing to relocate the displaced residents. Tenants were another matter. Since they did not own the property they resided in, they received no compensation for relocation. In the midst of a housing shortage, tenants found it extremely difficult to find adequate housing.