14 Percent of Lakewood Homes ‘Need Work’

More than 1,700 homes in Lakewood need some help getting up to housing code.

That’s according to the city’s finished comprehensive housing survey.

the initial results of the study — with Ward 4 data not yet available — following months of neighborhood canvassing. 

Ward 4 added 246 homes that fell into the “needs work” category. Another 12 homes in the ward are in “significant repair.” 

Hundreds of color-speckled dots on a satellite image of Lakewood tell the story of the current state — as well as the future — of the city’s aging housing stock. 

Red is bad, green is good.

Last summer, and building and housing officials set out on foot to examine 11,000 homes in the city. 

The result is the Residential Housing Survey, a collection of data that highlights areas of Lakewood that need some attention. 

Dru Siley, the city’s director of planning and development, said the city will begin to focus its efforts on one portion of the city: from Marlowe to Woodward avenues and Detroit to Madison avenues.

“Overall, our quality of housing is very good — 85 percent,” he recently told Lakewood Patch. “That still means 15 percent of that housing is challenged. We want to make sure that all housing, at the very least, is decent, safe and sanitary." 

The city sent out letters to all the homes noted as needing some work.

However most of issues are minor: cracked driveways; peeling paint; broken rails on porches. 

There are more than 50 red spots — properties that fall into the “significant disrepair” category — and more than 1,700 homes that fall into the “needs work” category (yellow).

The green dots denote homes that have no visible exterior code violations; the blue dots represent homes that “almost meet” the code.

The letters sent out to homeowners aren’t correction notices, rather warnings of potential future issues, Siley added.

The city is partnering with LakewoodAlive, the city’s economic development organization, to address the concerns.

Siley told Lakewood Patch in February that city officials will begin to follow up on the properties this month.