Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, November 21, 1993                   TAG: 9404220003
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: B2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

GET GOING ON REGIONAL HOUSING

Among do-gooders, this group is one of those doing the best. Surely, even the most hard-nosed among us want to see it prosper.

But Roanoke City Councilman James Harvey wasn't criticizing this worthy organization recently when he raised concerns about the city adding yet another unit of low-incoming housing to its tax rolls. He was reflecting the worry that the city continues to act as a magnet for people of low and moderate income, while other valley localities do nothing to help.

Is that going to change? It should.

Other governments, slowly, begrudgingly, finally are starting to take notice. And the talk, at least, is that they recognize the need to provide low-income housing throughout the region. This is at least a small step forward.

The Habitat proposal illustrated the situation: All 30 houses it has built in the Roanoke Valley have been in Roanoke. Yet the housing issue encompasses far more than Habitat building its 31st within city limits.

Roanoke has 1,333 federally subsidized housing units. Roanoke County has 64. Salem has 0.

Roanoke has a Redevelopment and Housing Authority that operates 10 public housing complexes, with a total of 1,500 units. There is no public housing in Roanoke County or in Salem.

Roanoke offers federal funds to help homeowners repair dilapidated houses. The county does not. Neither does Salem.

Roanoke makes available federal funds to help with down payments and closing costs so low- and moderate-income residents can become homeowners. There is no such assistance in the county or in Salem.

What Roanoke County and Salem do have are close to 150 families on a waiting list for subsidized or public housing - in Roanoke city.

Is there something wrong with this picture?

Back in May, months before City Council agreed to transfer title on the land for Habitat for Humanity's latest building project, the nationally respected Enterprise Foundation issued a report on "The Housing Needs, Programs and Opportunities in the Roanoke Valley Region." As its title suggests, it encourages a regional approach to meeting what is, after all, a regional need, and it recommends that the Roanoke Redevelopment and Housing Authority become a valleywide agency.

A regional authority would be able to get more federal money and sell bonds to generate more local money for housing programs, and it would be able to extend rehabilitation programs into more neighborhoods, the report advises.

Dispersal of low-income housing, rather than concentrating it in only a few neighborhoods, would be a good thing for all sorts of reasons, including residents' exposure to middle-class role models.

So why aren't we seeing action on the report's recommendations?

On Wednesday, representatives from various valley localities attending a housing conference said they were willing to talk about a regional approach.

Great idea. But localities don't have to wait for a regional authority to be set up to begin tackling their low-income housing needs. Most of what the Roanoke Redevelopment and Housing Authority does in the city can be done for other jurisdictions, its executive director says. Their governing bodies need only request it.

A show of initiative on housing would go a long way toward promoting the kind of valley cooperation that everybody says they want.