Before

Barbara Anderson remembers how the drug dealers and thieves slithered into Slavic Village, as if they'd smelled the neighborhood's desperation. They'd certainly seen it - the boarded-up, abandoned homes and overgrown lawns were like beacons, signaling that the community's ranks had been thinned, that it would be unable to defend itself from takeover.

She recalls the pay phone at East 76th Street and Union Avenue. The drug boys used it day and night, effectively shutting down the corner convenience store. Sightings of police were rare, and residents were loathe to confront the armed dealers.

Following the scent of blight, the drug boys spread out. As Anderson's dead-end block emptied - nearly half the 20 homes were foreclosed and abandoned - she could watch from her front door as they plied their trade. Other newcomers stripped the vacant homes of siding, leaving them as though they'd weathered hundreds of Cleveland winters. Squatters moved in.

Anderson remembers saying to a friend, "Somebody's gonna own these streets. And we just have to decide: Who's it gonna be?"

Others had come to the same conclusion and were ready to fight back. They gathered around the pay phone, organizing loud vigils that grew quickly as word spread. They demanded more police patrols. They petitioned the city to remove the pay phone, and continued their high-profile campaign throughout the four months it took for the city to comply with that simple request.

That was 2004 and they're still going. Today, "Bring Back the 70s," as the community activists call themselves (a reference to the numbered streets on which they operate) consists of homeowners, landlords and merchants, all dedicated to doing whatever they can to hold back the tide of drugs and crime and violence that otherwise could engulf Slavic Village.

Anderson knows that it still might. Committed citizens remain in short supply, thanks to a national epidemic of mortgage foreclosures that has hit Slavic Village harder than almost any other community in the country. But those who remain in these streets have shown that there are ways to respond.

Houses along East 76th Street are occupied by a mix of renters and homeowners. They are modest, 1,500 square feet or so; when they were built in 1970s, they sold for about $30,000.

It's easy to tell the ones still occupied, like Anderson's. Her front yard is an oasis of rose bushes and lawn ornaments, the grass is trimmed, and her Honda CR-V is parked in the driveway.

But then there's the blight, hundreds of homes with peeling paint, boarded-up windows, and littered and weed-choked lawns.

AFTER - A street goes from junkyard to playground. That's the same fireplug in both pics.

Most are owned by banks - in many cases, the same banks that once held the former owner's mortgage. Banks often let foreclosed homes go to sheriff's sales, then buy them back at a reduced price (it's a way of getting some money or collateral out in spite of foreclosure). If a new owner wants it, the bank will sell. That's rarely the case, so more often, the banks do nothing and the houses sit empty and rot, pulling down the value of the whole neighborhood.

The city steps in to maintain grass levels or litter infestations, and bills the owner listed on the deed. But banks usually don't transfer ownership deeds into their names, so the city's invoices go to long-gone former owners, who probably couldn't pay if they wanted to.

Add all that to the dumping ground that the end of East 76th Street was until two years ago, with old tires, car parts, aluminum, even an unopened Christmas present, all illegally dumped at odd hours, and Anderson knows her neighborhood won't ever be the same again.

"Will we be able to save every home on the street?" she asks. "Probably not. Some have to be condemned and torn down. I'm not talking about going back to the "good old days.' But I can see [getting] to some place better."

After telling her neighbor three years ago it was time to take back the streets and starting Bring Back the 70s, Anderson's path became clear.

For its first mission, the street club wanted a quick fix, something that would lead to quick results and galvanize even more residents into acting and joining the club. In 2004, the first annual neighborhood cleanup was conceived to transform East 76th Street from the dumping ground it was.

They borrowed a trash bin from the city, threw on some gloves and then hauled trash away with their hands - all summer, every evening after work, and all day on Saturdays and Sundays. People were asked to either pitch in or to work on their own front yards. They did, and it turned into a block party. Third District police performed a puppet show for the kids. Barbecues were hauled out, and people leaned on their brooms to continue chatting.

By fall 2004, attention turned to eliminating the drug trafficking outside the convenience store. Today, the spot where the pay phone used to be is covered with a leafy vine. Nailed to a nearby light post is a white and red rectangular sign: "Drug Free Zone."

As Anderson winds through the 70s blocks, toward her house, she points out more "Drug Free Zone" signs and newer "Neighborhood Watch" signs. To organize that, street club members had to attend police academy training sessions.

"Basically, we got a drug-free zone by taking over the corner," Anderson says.

The next year, Anderson won a $5,000 grant to purchase two surveillance cameras. They're mounted on the roof of an empty assembly plant in the middle of East 76th Street. One points out toward the main drag, Union Avenue. The other focuses on the dead end. Anderson monitors activity on a closed circuit TV in her kitchen. The cameras are also networked to other street club members' computers, and residents take shifts keeping watch. East 76th Street has been clean ever since.

BARBARA ANDERSON - She and her neighbors work to "bring back the 70s."

A grant also helped start a community garden that Slavic Village's elderly residents tend.

Last year, the street club paid neighborhood kids to decorate the fronts of houses. They bought buckets of green, red and blue paint. The children drew curtains, doors and imaginary people opening doors.

Anderson, the president of Bring Back the 70s, feeds off her success. She calls it "shameless perseverance." "We have to just keep on doing it," she says, "more than once or twice."

Now that the junkyard is cleaned up, the street club wants to make sure it stays that way. With small grants from two local organizations, Anderson will install a fence to close off access to the dump site. "We don't know [who owns it]," Anderson says about the property at the end of East 76th Street, "but we're taking it."

Residents have also bought two giant fiberglass containers. Right now, they lie upside down on a vacant lot along East 76th Street while members drill holes through the bottoms in order to convert them into large planters. Once complete, the flower pots will be placed by the fence, one on each end, with a wrought iron bench in between.

A few months ago, residents finally took clippers to weeds so overgrown that they eclipsed the abandoned little house behind them. Then they mowed the front yard down.

Anderson's work has pushed her to the forefront of county leaders in the foreclosure fight. She's become treasurer of both Empowerment Center of Greater Cleveland and Empowering and Strengthening Ohio's People (also known as ESOP, or the East Side Organizing Project), and co-chairs Slavic Village Development Corp.'s Abandoned and Vacant Housing Committee.

Though beautification of Slavic Village is important to improving quality of life, soon money and energy will run out. There are 20 new foreclosures filed in Cuyahoga County every day. So Anderson is also looking for ways to make the banks become responsible property owners and pay up.

For this, Anderson is turning to the courts. Street club members have been forking over their own money for the upkeep of the neighborhood's eyesores. Anderson wants to know if there's a way to make the real owners pay. It's an idea that's been nagging Raymond Pianka, Cleveland Municipal Court's housing court judge, for a while.

Recently, Pianka heard the case of a man who'd been cited by Cleveland housing inspectors for garbage in his front yard. But the man explained to the judge that he'd lost the property six months ago, and the bank that bought it at a sheriff's sale had left his name on the deed. Pianka dismissed the case and sent inspectors back out to find the bank in question.

Today banks are among the most negligent property owners in Cuyahoga County. The houses they've acquired through or after foreclosures are often left untended, their taxes unpaid. Pianka has issued arrest warrants against some 30 banks for not showing up in court to answer criminal code violations. But the warrants have no teeth - you can't arrest corporations.

Judge Raymond Pianka - Calling banks on the carpet.

A fed-up Pianka is doing what he can. He's holding up these banks' evictions until they respond to the code violations. He calls it the "clean hands doctrine." The banks don't like it, but he doesn't care. And in letters to the homes of corporate executives, Pianka is warning that no-show corporations will be tried in absentia. If found guilty, they'll be fined $5,000 per day.

Earlier this month, Pianka started holding trials of banks with years-old housing code violations. He plans to continue doing so every other Monday afternoon until his docket clears. On a recent Monday, Pianka went through five cases. Corporate lawyers for three of the cases were present. The judge beamed, as he finally got to ask one of them, "Where has your client been?"

In one case, Pianka fined Wells Fargo Bank of Minnesota $5,000 for missing gutters, a falling-in roof, crumbling steps and a yard filled with junked cars - code violations dating back to April 2005.

Pianka is working closely with Cleveland's Department of Building and Housing to make sure inspectors ramp up criminal citations issued to banks. The process is slow; the department is restructuring to meet new demands. He's creating a contact list of lending institutions that own vacant and abandoned properties, and making bailiffs post placards with this information at those lots. (In addition, State Rep. Mike Foley has introduced a bill that would require sheriffs to file ownership deeds within 14 days after a sale.)

Residents can also approach city prosecutors with nuisance code violations, like uncut grass, gaping windows and littered lawns, and argue that their homes are being devalued. It's a good strategy to use in housing court, says local attorney Ed Kramer, the executive director of Housing Advocates Inc., and one he's discussed with Slavic Village's Anderson.

Another avenue is "receiverships," or housing court orders that appoint someone other than the deadbeat owner to rehab the blighted property and resell it. Neighbors living within 500 feet, area nonprofits and the city can file for these. Receiverships have been increasing since 2005, with more Cleveland CDCs applying to take over abandoned buildings.

The city, however, hasn't filed for any, Pianka says. Odd, he says, as receiverships are an excellent nuisance-abatement tool. City attorneys in Columbus have done the same to great effect.

Armed with a list of Slavic Village properties in danger of foreclosure, Anderson and ESOP staff went door-knocking this spring to those left in their homes. They asked residents about their mortgages and whether they were coping with the payments. Those who admitted that they weren't were offered help.

Then ESOP staff inspected loans for suspicious terms and taught homeowners how to do the same. Borrowers were connected with financial institutions who'd agreed to partner with ESOP and help troubled clients refinance. ESOP is also educating homeowners on talking to lenders about new loan arrangements.

Refinancing alone, however, won't be enough for people deep in debt.

According to Cuyahoga County Treasurer Jim Rokakis, the goal has to be "to get people out of those [bad] loans, without prepayment penalties, without incurring any additional costs, and get them into prime loans." That means either a government bailout, banks coming to the table with loan renegotiation terms or some combination of the two.

JIM ROKAKiS - Wants lenders and investors to help clean up the mess.

So far, it's primarily been the government. The Ohio Housing Finance Agency has between $100 million and $300 million to rework mortgages. In Cleveland, city officials have collected $500,000 since 2005 to cover the difference between over-appraised home values and their current market rates. Rokakis is hoping for fast-track legislation, now in Columbus, that will allow him, within weeks, to divert $3 million toward helping families fill the gap between missed payments and the legal fees and penalties that onerous loan terms have racked up.

Ultimately, Rokakis wants to sit down with lenders and ask them to waive those fees, and renegotiate long-term, fixed rate products for these borrowers. Plain refinances, on the other hand, would still require borrowers to put the high fees and penalties into lenders' pockets before getting new loans.

Sheila Bair, the chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which regulates banks, has publicly stated that the best options are loan modifications that "provide sustainable mortgages for borrowers."

Leaders like Rokakis and Bair are trying to coax just this outcome. On April 16, the FDIC, along with the Federal Reserve and four other banking regulators, met with the subprime market's financial players "to identify workable solutions for rising delinquencies and defaults, including alternatives to foreclosure," Bair said.

In the end, if banks cooperate at all, it'll be out of self-interest, says Kathleen Engel, a law professor at Cleveland State University who researches predatory lending and housing discrimination. Already faced with sinking profits, as subprime default rates far surpass what even the more brilliant Wall Street types predicted, Bear Stearns Cos., one of the largest investment banks and securities trading firms in the world, is talking about ways to pick out the worst in their loan packages and rewrite terms.

"Investors have been bleeding lately on Wall Street," Engel says. "That, after all, is what's getting everyone's interest in the first place. One could see why the trusts would rather have reduced returns, rather than own large tracts of abandoned properties in cities like Cleveland and be subject to copper scalpers, nuisance lawsuits and code violations."

One evening in May, Anderson sat outside and watched children play in the middle of East 76th Street. They were laughing, running, roller skating, biking, from one house to another like they lived in all of them. Older kids sat on cars and gossiped. Anderson admired her just-blooming rose bush. She saw a bluebird perched on her neighbor's rooftop. "Isn't that pretty," she said.

Anderson was smiling, but a thick binder documenting the pitched and ongoing battle for Slavic Village lay across her lap.

There's more to do. Anderson has sights set on reclaiming a vacant lot next to her house, perhaps for a playground or a greenhouse. She's asking for ideas. The street club has been contacting landlords to ask for a chance to interview potential tenants and give feedback as a way to keep out bad influences. So far, two landlords have agreed, and the street club plans to contact more. And the members are petitioning the city to turn East 76th Street into a one-way road, and minimize through traffic filled with drug dealers.

"We don't sit around talking about what's wrong," Anderson says. "We talk about solutions."

Next in the series (July 11): Possible legal solutions to the foreclosure crisis.