Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, December 4, 1994 TAG: 9501170005
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
By "good housing" is not meant mansions for mendicants, penthouses for the penniless. What's meant is housing that simply meets basic standards of health, safety, comfort and the like.
The deterioration of much of Roanoke's older housing stock has been reported before. It is noted again in an article by Ted Edlich on today's Commentary page. But Edlich, director of Total Action Against Poverty, goes beyond the obvious. Several of his additional points and implications merit emphasis, further comment or both. Three among them:
Abject poverty is only a part of the question; on the specific issue of reversing the deterioration of Roanoke's housing stock, abject poverty may well be only a minor part of the question.
Ensuring the quality of affordable housing in Roanoke is compatible with, not in conflict with, the city's desire to attract and retain middle-class residents/taxpayers.
Proven means exist to reverse housing-stock deterioration, and Roanoke is not making full use of them.
Low income need not imply utter destitution. It can also be the elderly widow on a limited income but with enough money to pay monthly rent for a modest apartment - but whose landlord, while willing to take her money, isn't willing to mend the hole in the roof or repair the faulty heating system. Or it could be a young family now renting that could afford by scrimping to buy, and thus start building equity in, a modest home - but only in neighborhoods where boarded-up houses nearby are invitations for trouble that the family wishes understandably to avoid.
Civilized societies have an obligation to look out for their weakest members, for those without resources to fend for themselves. But reversing the deterioration of Roanoke housing can't depend on those without money; it ultimately must depend on linking affordable housing, properly maintained, with those who can pay for it.
Put another way, reversing housing deterioration isn't, and can't be, just another welfare program. It's a matter of forestalling the breakdown of neighborhoods, of doing more to ensure Roanoke's future livability. The physical health of a neighborhood is vital to its social health; the value and quality of a home in good condition depend in great part on the condition of neighboring homes; deteriorating housing creates an incentive for those who can - including middle-class taxpayers - to flee the city.
As Edlich observes, rehabilitation is no stranger to Roanoke; the difficulty is that it isn't keeping up with the deterioration. This suggests that carrots - loan programs to help marginal home-mortage applicants get over the qualifying threshold, design competitions for infill housing - are, however useful, not by themselves enough. Roanoke needs more sticks, like the certificate-of-compliance programs described by Edlich for rental property in Lynchburg and Virginia Beach, to help ward off deterioration in the first place.
Such maintenance-enforcement programs reasonably reflect the fact that the control over property conferred by ownership is not absolute. With ownership come obligations as well as privileges.
by CNB