Ohio University alum Wilbert L. Cooper, now an Associate Editor at Vice, has written a vivid long-form piece about the scrap-metal community in Cleveland, Ohio — a bustling community indeed. Foremost among his revelations is that Cleveland ranks first in the U.S., by a substantial margin, for metal theft per capita.
Cooper follows scrappers — most of them in the Central neighborhood on the city’s east side — and learns the ins and outs of the trade. He even chats with councilman Anthony Brancatelli to provide perspective about how the housing crisis and metal theft are inextricably linked.
Here’s one of the more thought-provoking moments in the story:
If Anthony [Brancatelli] and locals favor demolition, though, to people like Shorty and Jay—unemployed and without many legal job prospects—demolition represents a wasted economic opportunity. As I left Slavic Village, I thought of something Shorty had told me. “You’ve got thousands of condemned homes in Cleveland,” he’d said. “What do they do with all the stuff in those buildings? They send it to a landfill. Why wouldn’t you let someone who is unemployed go into a building and get what they can get? It’s going to be demolished anyway.”
Maybe that is the paradox of scrapping: the same economic forces that created the housing crises also helped create the scrappers who survive on its wreckage. And so, while city leaders like Anthony might see scrappers as their enemies—leeches on the city’s meager resources—both parties are part of the same destroyed economy and neither will likely stop harassing the other until the city finds some larger economic salve for its wounds. They’re all on this sinking ship together.
This article appears in Oct 9-15, 2013.
They broke into my uncle’s house after he died while it was on the market and stole all the copper, causing us to spend several thousand dollars to replace the pipes so we could sell the house. I’m just grateful someone had warned me to turn off the water in the house, because I have heard they sometimes leave the water running and flood the basement in feet of water. I see them as my enemy too. They leave behind nothing but blight.
Adding to bonnjill’s comment, these people destroy neighborhoods. It’s not that they don’t get to strip houses that are going to be demolished, many times they are a huge contributing factor to the reason a house lands on the demo list. If you have a $30,000 house and someone strips out the plumbing and electrical, typically by taking a sledgehammer to the floors and walls, they take a cheap but habitable house and make it worthless as it doesn’t make sense to fix the damage on a house that is only worth $30,000 to begin with. The economic destruction these POS’s cause is amazing, and all for a couple hundred bucks worth of scrap. I rank them with corner drug dealers for negative impact and wish they were treated (legally) the same way.
Theft is theft. No matter if one decides they’re going to dispose of the materials or not, once the items have reached the dumpster by the owner, have at it. UNTIL then, you are a stealing property from another. No justification. Just because you are poor doesn’t make you entitled to steal from your neighbor. This city is getting worse and worse.
They destroyed a house we had for sale on West 48th. They did cut the main and water ran for 70 hours before we discovered it. I think they should be shot on sight.
Somewhat of a solution…..ban all grocery carts from the streets. First of all, they are stolen from grocery stores and secondly they are primarily used to haul items they’ve stolen to begin with.