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CLEVELAND HEIGHTS -- A gleam of silver tinsel still stapled to a basement beam haunts the empty house. Once, this tiny bit of glitter might have been part of shimmering streams of fuzzy foil hung for someone's birthday, anniversary or holiday celebration.

Its glow is nearly lost in the shadows as time freezes in the house's barren rooms that stand muffled in dusty stillness, bearing the scuffs and worn evidence that somebody once lived, laughed and loved here.

Now, the house has joined the ranks of thousands more, adrift on a sea of foreclosures.

But not for long, if the Cleveland Heights Home Repair Resource Center is successful with its first Home in the Heights rehabilitation project.

In coming months the center plans to renovate the 2,050-square-foot, four-bedroom house on Westover Drive, which has been vacant for more than a year.

This initial effort is a small dent in the inventory of roughly 1,000 vacant single-family homes in Cleveland Heights, most of them foreclosed houses.