CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Scores of low-income families who have paid rent for years on homes they were told they could one day own in Cleveland's Glenville neighborhood may have their dreams dashed because no one paid the property taxes.

They have been participating in a program established in the 1990s that is supposed to allow renters to purchase their homes after 15 years at a below-market price.

Hallmark Management Realty of Cleveland was responsible for collecting rents on 93 homes in the Glenville area and using that money to pay the mortgages, property taxes and utility bills and to make necessary repairs.

But around 2007, Hallmark stopped paying the taxes on the Glenville homes, and now the collective bill is about $120,000, said Andy Nikiforovs, executive director of Community Housing Solutions, a minority shareholder in the project that paid Hallmark to manage the properties.

Residents started asking questions recently about when they could buy their homes and how much they would cost.

Because rent has been used to pay the mortgage for 15 years, the renters are supposed to receive discounted prices.

But instead of being given a timeline and a price, the residents have largely been given the run-around.

Darlene Walker, 53, said she learned earlier this month that the two-story, three-bedroom house she has lived in for more than 15 years is slated for sheriff's sale in April because of overdue taxes.

More than $7,500 in taxes and penalties are owed on the house.

The homes in question were built in the mid-1990s using tax credit financing. Most of the money came from large corporations wanting to invest in low-income housing in return for substantial federal tax credits.

The homes are split between two limited partnerships. Corporate investors own 99 percent of each partnership, and a general partner owns the other 1 percent. The now-defunct Northeastern Neighborhood Development Corp. combined with Community Housing Solutions as the general partner in both partnerships. Community Housing Solutions was then known as Lutheran Housing Corp.

Nikiforovs believes the tax delinquencies have their origins in the mortgage crisis that began around 2006. Glenville was hit hard, with many foreclosures and abandoned properties, he said.

Crime also has been a problem.

That made finding people to rent the homes more difficult, Nikiforovs said.

Renters sign one-year leases, Nikiforovs said. If a renter takes over for a previous occupant, that renter gets credit for all the years the home has been rented or on the market.

Hallmark, which quit as property manager in November of last year, did not return calls seeking comment.

"I think it just got too much for them," Nikiforovs said.

Nikiforovs said the situation was made more difficult when the executive director of Northeastern Neighborhood Development Corp. became seriously ill and the company eventually dissolved. He said Northeastern had developed a relationship with the tenants.

That left Community Housing Solutions alone to take charge of the project. Now, Nikiforovs is scrambling to fix all the problems and find the money needed to pay the taxes so renters who qualify can buy their homes.

On top of that, a lot of maintenance needs to be done, Nikiforovs said. Altogether, he said, the two projects will require $250,000 to $400,000 to pay all the back taxes and make repairs. He hired Rent Due LLC to take over as property manager after Hallmark abruptly quit.

Rent Due owner Zak Burkons said Hallmark officials told him they stopped paying the taxes because they needed the cash for repairs. He also said the department of Housing and Urban Development is investigating what happened.

As for the suggestion that vacancies made it difficult for Hallmark to pay the taxes, Burkons said the homes in question were more than 90 percent occupied going back to 2007.

The Ohio Housing Finance Agency, which administers the tax credit program, recently determined that the project's general partner, specifically Nikiforovs, had failed to properly oversee Hallmark.

It also cited him for hiring a company -- Rent Due -- that did not have any experience managing tax credit housing. The agency said Burkons, Rent Due's owner, has taken steps to receive the necessary training.

Nikiforovs said he disagreed with the finance agency's assessment of his oversight. He said the problems were left in his lap when the Northeastern Neighborhood Development Corp. went out of business.

"We are playing catch up," he said.

Nikiforovs said he's still optimistic the money can be found to shore up the program and allow the renters to buy their homes, assuming they qualify with lenders and meet all criteria.

As for Walker's house that is scheduled to be sold in tax foreclosure next month, he said, "We are aggressively pursuing a plan to avoid the foreclosure."

But all those things take money, and right now, Nikiforovs doesn't have it.

The homes are two stories, with three or four bedrooms and basements. Nikiforovs said he couldn't estimate how much the homes would sell for. Whatever the price, it will be the same for all the homes, he said.

None of the houses have individual mortgages. Instead, each project has a single mortgage covering all the houses. One of the original lenders was Shorebank, now known as Urban Partnership Bank. The other was Huntington Bank. Nikiforovs said that the mortgages are current with both banks but that Huntington was unhappy about the unpaid taxes.

"They want to see some resolution of the tax issue," Nikiforovs said.

The uncertainly of it all weighs on Kimberly Kelly, 40, a medical assistant at the Cleveland Clinic who has lived in her home on East 125th Street with her husband and four children for 13 years.

She would like Nikiforovs or somebody to call a forum where all the renters can come together and find out exactly what's going on.

"I think I need something a little bit more definitive," Kelly said.

Nikiforovs said he would rather meet with groups of families to make it more manageable. But until he gets a few more answers, there's not a lot he can say.

Community Housing Solutions could have walked away from the two projects, he said, and simply left the renters hanging.

"We could have," he said, "and we didn't."

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: pkrouse@plaind.com, 216-999-4128