Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 20, 1994 TAG: 9403220022
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Alan Sorensen editorial page editor
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
I say this because, on a bright new morning last week, I traveled to Lynchburg along with three Roanoke community activists who work with Total Action Against Poverty.
Our delegation visited with the Rev. Herbert Moore Jr., recently retired executive director of Lynchburg Covenant Fellowship, and with Irma Seiferth, its new director. The ecumenical LCF for years has been a catalyst for inner-city housing efforts in Lynchburg. Certainly, what we saw and heard last week was impressive.
Moore is a wry man with white unkempt hair and a gleam in his eyes. Before settling in Lynchburg, he was a young pastor in Roanoke, living in the home former Mayor Noel Taylor occupies today. Since the '70s he has worked out of LCF headquarters, in a rambling, decaying Victorian house bought 30 years ago for $9,000.
LCF is a story in itself. It began in 1950 as a Monday night get-together for church friends, who decided to start a day camp for neighborhood children.
In 1961, the children of a physician and a dentist enrolled in the camp. They happened to be black. Within a week, the staff outnumbered campers. Within a year, enrollment had become almost entirely black - and LCF was embroiled in the civil-rights movement.
Perhaps Lynchburg's more confrontational integration during the '60s activated that city's church community more than an easier integration did for Roanoke. Our churches have been socially involved - Roanoke Area Ministries does excellent work - but not with endeavors quite so enterprising, complicated or expensive as LCF's housing initiatives.
In any event, the fellowship soon developed an inner-city ministry that included tutoring children, delivering firewood to poor families, and sheltering the mentally disabled and victims of domestic abuse.
Exposure to poverty sensitized LCF leaders to Lynchburg's housing needs. In 1966, they raised funds to buy an old Moose Lodge, and with mostly volunteer labor transformed it into eight apartments. In 1967, they began plans to build the 46-unit Shalom Apartments. In the '70s, they bought two abandoned school buildings in the central city, converting them into townhouses and apartments.
Our delegation visited Lynchburg High Apartments, atop one of the city's highest hills. It's a handsome building, now housing seniors and low-income families. From the porch of its "penthouse," our view of the city was striking.
But in trading notes afterwards, we agreed the most impressive sight during our visit was of the Lynchburg community's level of commitment to improving its stock of decent, affordable housing. That commitment extends well beyond a few veterans of the war on poverty.
Alas, as TAP President Ted Edlich observed on the drive back, the contrasts with Roanoke are inescapable. A lot of good things are going on here. Nonetheless:
In Lynchburg, the housing authority for 20 years has worked closely with LCF, other non-profits and the local community action agency to coordinate housing efforts. The authority has floated bonds and cleared sites for others to build low-income housing.
In Roanoke, until a new executive director of the authority was recently installed, there was notably little cooperation. Bonds here are for funding parking garages.
In Lynchburg, top civic leaders, big-time bankers and heads of corporations are involved in housing policy. One of Lynchburg's most prominent developers has been building $26,000 homes for low-income buyers. A nationally reputed tax attorney gives his time to set up investor syndicates for financing rental projects.
In Roanoke, low-income housing barely registers as a civic concern.
In Lynchburg, the City Council has been a committed partner in housing policy. One of its members, Junius Haskins Jr., serves with the LCF board and Lynchburg's community action agency.
In Roanoke, City Council members have focused recently on low-income housing - they complain that its availability has attracted too many poor people to the city.
In Lynchburg, Moore and the LCF have been driving forces behind communitywide low-income housing efforts for decades. James Rouse, a nationally renowned developer and planner, visited Lynchburg in 1970. Since then, his Enterprise Foundation has played a key role, with grants and advice, in community renewal. For example, the foundation helped LCF and others set up a loan fund to help working-poor families buy their first homes.
In Roanoke, not until recently was a regional housing network formed. The Enterprise Foundation has issued a study of Roanoke Valley housing. It calls for several overdue reforms, including regionalization of housing efforts. So far, most of the recommendations have been ignored.
nIn Lynchburg, housing is a centerpiece of city leaders' ambitious but focused vision for the future. They are committed to eliminating all substandard rental housing in the city within 10 years.
In Roanoke, housing is barely mentioned in the New Century Council's proposed regional vision. And rather than making progress, as Lynchburg is, on the amount of available, up-to-code units versus sub-standard housing, Roanoke is losing ground.
I'd rather live in the beautiful Roanoke Valley than in Lynchburg. Certainly, the latter is no closer to ending poverty than Roanoke is. And Lynchburg is stuck with Jerry Falwell.
But I believe we can learn lessons from our neighboring city, and from its residents who were driven by faith and conscience to pursuits very different from Falwell's.
by CNB