Job creation, repopulation, and
rehabilitation of distressed housing stock, present the most difficult
challenges to Cleveland’s West Side neighborhoods. Entrepreneurial immigrants are an untapped
resource to help revitalize and repopulate the West Side neighborhoods. Why? Two reasons: high ratio of
entrepreneurship in immigrant communities; and population growth in U.S. cities
are predominantly driven by immigrant influx. Read the intruction to the following Pilot Program proposal below and follow the link and the bottom of this posting for the complete proposal:

Recommendations
to:

 Cuyahoga County Commissioners

Mayor Jane Campbell

Cleveland City
Council Members

By:   Rose
Zitiello, Department of Community Development, Cleveland

 Jay Gardner, Director of
Bellaire-Puritas Development Corporation

Marc Abraham, Commercial Coordinator,
Bellaire-Puritas Devel. Corp.

Richard Herman, Esq., Richard T. Herman &
Associations, LLC

INTRODUCTION 

Job creation, repopulation, and
rehabilitation of distressed housing stock, present the most difficult
challenges to Cleveland’s West Side neighborhoods. Entrepreneurial immigrants are an untapped
resource to help revitalize and repopulate the West Side neighborhoods. Why? Two reasons: high ratio of
entrepreneurship in immigrant communities; and population growth in U.S. cities
are predominantly driven by immigrant influx.

Some immigrant groups are two to
three times more likely to start a business than those born in the U.S. 

Two-thirds of all population
growth in the U.S. from 1980 to 2000 came from immigrants and their
children. Immigrants today tend to be
younger than the median age of American-born, and in most cases they are imbued
with a strong work ethic and an entrepreneurial spirit. Cities considered the most resurgent over the
last 20 years, are cities with high-foreign born populations. Cleveland is near the bottom of the largest
fifty American cities in terms of attracting this new wave of immigrants.

Promoting immigrant
entrepreneurship in Cleveland will help counter the region’s abysmal record in
generating new businesses, and in attracting immigrants to repopulate and
revitalize its neighborhoods. Many
potential Clevelanders are immigrants living in America’s overcrowded,
expensive cosmopolitan areas, and who are interested in relocating to locations
where there is entrepreneurial opportunity along with safe environments in
which to raise their families.

Throughout
the U.S., immigrant clusters have revitalized neighborhoods and spurred growth
through small neighborhood proprietorship, real estate investment, technology
start-ups, and international trade. In
similarly-situated post-industrial cities, like Pittsburgh, Philadelphia,
Baltimore, Buffalo, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Schenectady, and Louisville,
programs have been enacted to promote the growth and success of its existing
immigrant communities.

The Bronx was brought back from
the dead, not because of investment from large commercial chains or high-tech
innovation, but because new immigrant entrepreneurship enlivened vacant Bronx
storefronts, achieved more confident neighborhood safety, catalyzed more immigrant influx to replace
the net out-flow of residents, and helped renovate housing stock.

A recent study of the Washington
DC area shows that areas that are home to more immigrants have a much higher
percent increase in property values than areas with less and immigrants and DC
as a whole. 

Over the past two years,
media, civic, business, and political leaders have voiced strong concern that
Cleveland is failing to capitalize on opportunities to attract and grow
immigrant entrepreneurial and residential clusters: