Benjamin Lowy

RECENT WORK: OHIO | A Long Road to Recovery

Ohio may not be where your mind goes when you think about the real estate bust. Quarter by quarter, from early 2003 through the end of 2006, Ohio had more foreclosures than any other state on the country. That was during the first wave of misery to befall the housing market.

That wave has subsided somewhat—Ohio currently ranks 8th for foreclosures—but the consequences endure. Today in Cleveland's Cuyahoga County there are about 26,000 vacant homes. Come here (or to Detroit, Youngstown, or Dayton) and you can observe the beginnings of a hard shift in America. A place where the vast pool of middle-class wealth began to evaporate. Where cash drawn from the well of homeowner equity—a flow that kept consumers spending and the economy humming, even as jobs disappeared and incomes plunged—eventually ran dry. Where a piece of the American dream died.

Shoes hang from a utility cable on a street lines with vacant and abandoned homes on January 30, 2012 in Cleveland, OH.
  
Blocks of Cuyahoga County are filled with vacant and stripped homes, the city of Cleveland too cash-strapped to demolish all of them on February 2, 2012 in Cleveland, OH.
  
Vacant homes, high crime and urban blight mar what was once one of the busiest steel mill towns along the famous American Rust Belt on February 7, 2012 in Youngstown, OH.
     
  
Ian Benniston, a leader in the Youngstown Neighborhood Association, walks through a vacant home on February 7, 2012 in Youngstown, OH. High crime and urban blight mar what was once one of the busiest steel mill towns along the famous American Rust Belt.
  
A city demolition sub-contractor works on the extraction of a vacant home on February 2, 2012 in Cleveland, OH. It only took one hour to reduce this house -- one of about 26,000 vacant homes in Cuyahoga County -- to a pile of rubble. Ohio will allocate $75 million from the $25 billion National Mortgage Settlement to tear down more houses.
  
A lone man sits in the Red Chimney, a restaurant in Slavic Village, epicenter of the cleveland housing crisis on February 3, 2012 in Cleveland, OH.
     
  
A man walks past an abandoned office building in an empty and economically ravaged downtown on February 3, 2012 in Cleveland, OH.
   
Business men walk along an empty downtown street on February 3, 2012 in Cleveland, OH.
  
The drab plywood covering the windows of this vacant and condemned community center have been painted over with more colorful scenes on February 2, 2012 in Cleveland, OH.
     
  
A vast scrapyard dominates the landscape in a spot that was once one of the busiest steel mills along the famous American Rust Belt on February 7, 2012 in Youngstown, OH.
  
Darius Brown, 15, plays the violin in Cincinnati's Findlay Market, an outdoor market in the Over-The-Rhine neighborhood on February 5, 2012 in Cincinnati, OH. On summer Sundays he claims he goes home with as much as $150. “He has taken personal responsibility for himself,” said his mother.
   
“Where am I supposed to go?” Retired Deacon Charles Berry is one of the last residents on a block filled with vacant and stripped homes on February 2, 2012 in Cleveland, OH.
     
  
A man walks through an empty and economically ravaged downtown on February 3, 2012 in Cleveland, OH.
   
Customers drink their coffee in a Starbucks opened on the grounds of a failed bank, in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the star on February 5, 2012 in Bexley, OH. Now customers can drink a latte in an empty bank vault.
  
The stacks from the Gavin coal burning power plant dwarf a small nearby home on February 4, 2012 in Cheshire, OH.
     
  
Workers at Quality Electrodynamics, a fast-growing high-tech startup: Founded by a Japanese immigrant, QED designs and manufactures parts for MRI machines and employs 86 workers, some with only high-school diplomas, on February 2, 2012 in Mayfield, OH.
   
Abandoned properties await renovation in Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine neighborhood on February 5, 2012 in Cincinnati, OH.
  
A former steel industry worker drinks in a bar a small bar on February 7, 2012 in Youngstown, OH.
     
  
While claiming to be one of the last remaining Occupy sites, tents belonging to the Occupy Columbus protest movement lie abandoned on February 6, 2012 in Columbus, OH.
   
Spectators of an Mixed Martial Arts cage match watch fighters battle on February 4, 2012 in Nelsonville, OH.
  
A homeless man sits next to an empty pre-world war building on February 7, 2012 in Youngstown, OH.
     
  
Vacant homes, high crime and urban blight mar what was once one of the busiest steel mill towns along the famous American Rust Belt on February 7, 2012 in Youngstown, OH.
  
"I've been through a lot of recessions," says local merchant, Larry Ashford, 71. "This was no recession. This was a depression." in Smitty's General store on February 5, 2012 in Cincinnati, OH.
   
A woman gets her hair done in the Hair-It-Is salon in a small rural town with one of the highest drug and crime rates in the state on February 6, 2012 in McArthur, OH.
     
  
A bare tree and trash litter the front of the closed Richman's garment factory, now in process of renovation and conversion to Apartments by chinese investors, on February 2, 2012 in Cleveland, OH.