Leila Atassi

2 days ago | cleveland.com | Leila Atassi

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Maybe it hit you when you opened the envelope and saw the new number — your home, suddenly worth six figures more. Even if you have no plans to sell, the county says that’s what it’s worth on the open market. And with it, your tax bill surged, too. That was the reality for Lakewood homeowner Beth Blackmarr, whose modest home was reassessed overnight at $107,000 more. “We got clobbered,” she recently told cleveland.com.

1 week ago | cleveland.com | Leila Atassi

Mayor Bibb answers questions from the audience. Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb delivered his fourth, and final of this term, State of the City address on Wednesday, April 23, 2025, at Cleveland Public Auditorium.David Petkiewicz, cleveland.comCLEVELAND, Ohio -- Imagine this: You’re driving to work, maybe running a few minutes late. You approach an intersection, the light turns red, but you decide to push it — just this once. You roll through, and suddenly, you’re broadsided by another vehicle.

3 weeks ago | cleveland.com | Leila Atassi

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- It’s easy to judge from a distance. To look at the grocery cart of a low-income parent and scoff at the soda, cookies and ice cream sandwiches nestled between the rice and ramen. But judgment feels different up close. I learned that as a reporter, spending time in the homes of Cleveland families trying to make ends meet. I watched mothers skip dinner so their kids could have seconds and stretch a package of ground beef into a week of meals.

1 month ago | cleveland.com | Leila Atassi

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Somewhere in Ohio today, a baby will be born too soon. Maybe in Cuyahoga County, where infant mortality just climbed to its highest level in five years. Maybe in a rural town, where a family can’t find a doctor. Maybe to a mother whose heart is full but whose paycheck ran out before the month did. That baby’s chance of seeing a first birthday will depend not only on love and luck but on whether Ohio lawmakers believe in saving lives more than winning a never-ending culture war.

1 month ago | cleveland.com | Leila Atassi

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- When the Nazis stormed into Belarus in 1941, Aly Stein’s grandfather was just 11 years old — the same age her son is today. Orphaned, he escaped into the woods and spent the rest of the Holocaust fighting back as a member of the Jewish Partisans. Three decades later, fleeing his homeland with his wife and children, he refused to settle in Israel, having seen fellow survivors complicit in the displacement of Palestinians.