ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 10, 1996 TAG: 9603110001
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DIANE STRUZZI STAFF WRITER
OVERWHELMED AND UNDERSTAFFED, Roanoke's building inspectors work to keep the city's housing stock safe.
Just after 9 a.m., Dave Hatchett faces his first problem of the day: squirrels.
The critters are running rampant in an apartment. The tenant says the landlord doesn't care.
Hatchett, a Roanoke building inspector, listens to the caller and writes down the information.
The squirrels aren't a safety hazard, so he suggests that the tenant call her landlord again and let the city Building Inspections Department know the outcome.
Hatchett has nearly 50 open cases - about one-fifth of them reflecting serious safety problems - and squirrels fall near the bottom.
In Roanoke, where many houses date back to the early 1900s - and there are only three inspectors to work an inner-city area that includes about 5,500 rental units - rental inspection is an awesome task.
The job is reactive, not preventive.
"We're putting out fires," Hatchett said. "Even that's overwhelming."
The inspection department does not keep track of how many complaints it receives. But after a January fire that killed five people in Southeast Roanoke, the office logged more than 100 calls - questions about the safety of rental units, requests for smoke detectors and complaints about apartment conditions.
Authorities discovered possible building code violations in the house at 1228 Stewart Ave. S.E., where the five people - a woman and her four grandchildren - died. There was no evidence of smoke detectors, which the city requires on every floor of a house. The duplex had been partitioned into a triplex, and there was no fire-retaining wall between the two downstairs units.
A rental inspection program would likely have caught those violations, advocates say.
A program being considered by the city would require apartments to be inspected between tenants. Now, inspectors can evaluate an apartment only if they receive a complaint.
"It's frustrating, because I don't know if we've slowed down the spiral decline of city property," Hatchett said. "It's growing faster than we can keep up with it."
The inspection program would help them catch small problems before they become monumental, Hatchett said. But the department will need more money and more staff to do that, a reality that city officials acknowledge.
The fire on Stewart Avenue heightened interest in rental inspection and focused attention on Hatchett's department. When building officials appeared reluctant to cite the owners of the house - leaving the decision up to Commonwealth's Attorney Donald Caldwell - it raised questions about the office's willingness to take a stand on behalf of tenants. (Caldwell has not completed his review of the case.)
Hatchett welcomes the attention. He said it can only help people understand that his job isn't to take sides, but rather to fix a problem in the least punitive manner.
"We're human, we have money problems at our homes like other people do," Hatchett said. "As long as you're working diligently ... we want to remedy a problem, not punish [you]."
The inspection department has waited nine years for John Kepley to clean up 356 Day Ave. S.W. The two-story frame house has been boarded up since a fire killed a 6-month-old boy in 1987.
The house is an eyesore. Paint has chipped away, exposing bare shingles. A window on the second floor is open, allowing rain and snow into the structure.
In December, inspectors ordered that the house be torn down, believing it was unsafe. Kepley challenged that order before the Building Property Maintenance Code Appeals Board, an avenue of review for those who are cited by inspectors. The five-person board is appointed by City Council.
Kepley admits that the house is in need of work. He says it has been the subject of family litigation for nearly a decade, precluding him from doing repairs.
The longtime landlord - he recently organized his colleagues against the city's proposed rental inspection program - said he wants to rehabilitate the house.
But his philosophy directly opposes that of the inspection office, which would prefer to raze dilapidated structures, Kepley claimed at his appeals hearing. He accused the office of bullying landlords into tearing down properties. (Between July 1994 and July 1995, the building inspectors office ordered 73 houses razed; 156 houses were successfully boarded up or repaired.)
The board gave Kepley two months to bring his house into compliance. But the case didn't end there.
Kepley then filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city and Hatchett, claiming they violated his rights by entering the Day Avenue house without a search warrant.
At the appeals board hearing, Hatchett had said he believed the house was unsafe and that an assistant commonwealth's attorney advised a search warrant wasn't necessary.
While the lawsuit requests more than $100,000 in damages, Kepley's attorney, John Kennett, said making money is not the goal.
"They've been pushing us around, saying we've been doing illegal stuff," he said. "We push them around, saying they've done illegal stuff. You counter a push with a push, and maybe we can get some handshaking."
Last week, despite the legal wrangling, 356 Day appeared to be on its way to demolition. According to the building inspections department, Kepley had requested an application to raze the house. As of Friday, he had not received a permit. He did not return a telephone call.
Roanoke's neighborhoods are a reminder of the days when the railroad ruled the city, when its population doubled at the turn of the century, when the home was the center of family life.
Drive along Patterson Avenue Southwest and you'll see the remnants of grand homes once owned by the city's elite. On Tazewell Avenue Southeast are tattered row houses that once met a growing city's need for affordable housing.
"Times change; people's attitudes change," said Hatchett, who grew up in Virginia Heights in Southwest Roanoke. "There's a different attitude now about personal property and rights. People used to keep their houses repaired and neat because it was the thing to do and their neighbors did it. They may have been socially chastised before [when they didn't]. But not anymore."
This January day could be any day for Hatchett. As he gets out of his car at 617 Tazewell Avenue S.E., he shakes his head.
"We can work and work over here," Hatchett said. "But this area is all but lost."
There is furniture on the porch of the vacant house, garbage and old cars in the backyard. The back door is unlocked. There's a gaping hole in the foundation. Chipped, honeycombed wood is evidence that termites have moved in.
A woman without a coat bounds into the front yard, hugging her body to keep warm on the bone-chilling day. Frances Smith has lived on the block for two years.
She has seen it all, she says: Prostitutes who used the house; tenants who told her they paid $165 a month despite decaying foundations and what they thought were gas leaks; plumbing problems that forced tenants to go outside to turn the water on and off.
"Well, I'll tell you, if anyone's living in this house, God help them," Smith said. "If you'll look, the floor is rotten."
Hatchett walks inside the basement apartment. Because the house is not locked, and its condition is considered a hazard, Hatchett is allowed by law to enter.
The wall in one of the rooms is crumbling, exposing the skeletal two-by-fours that hold up the masonry. On the walls there are remnants of tic-tac-toe games played in days past. The kitchen ceiling is sagging. A broken pipe juts from the wall.
"This has been years of neglect, of not repairing," Hatchett said. "This is why rental inspections are a necessary evil. Everyone has to pay for the actions of a few."
He turns to Smith and says, "This one is getting shut down."
He posts a yellow condemnation sign near the front door. The property cannot be rented again until the landlord makes the necessary repairs.
S&R of Roanoke Inc., which owns the property, also owns the Stewart Avenue house where the January fire occurred. The president of the company, William T. Stone, said tenants did the damage at 617 Tazewell Ave.
"You'd be absolutely amazed at how much damage can be done in a short period of time," Stone said.
No gas leaks or plumbing problems were ever reported, he said. But Stone confirmed that he had been told of prostitutes in one of the apartments. He said that when he tried to evict them, they tore out electric breaker boxes and broke into the other units in the house.
Within the past year, Stone said, he has lost nearly $9,000 in unpaid rent. Finding good tenants for that house was next to impossible.
"I am completely disillusioned with renting property in Roanoke," he said. "With the kind of property I'm providing, I can't find the tenants to pay the rent. Being a landlord is not something I want to make a profession out of. It's nothing more than a small sideline that turned into a nightmare."
He said he wants to sell 617 Tazewell to someone who will renovate the house and rent it as a single-family unit. Families make better tenants, he said.
Stone has boarded up the house. And it is likely that any repairs - in particular, to the wiring and exterior - will have to be completed by the new owner, he said.
That's no comfort to Smith, who owns a nearby home. The problem with less-than-diligent landlords is that their properties degrade a neighborhood and attract less-than-scrupulous tenants, she said.
"If you go into a house that's all tore up," she said, "then people have low self-esteem about that house - 'If they don't care, why should I?'''
Back at his office, Hatchett logs onto his computer to trace the ownership of several houses he inspected. Thirty minutes in the field can mean hours of investigating property ownership, filling out criminal summonses for landlords who do not fix their property, or court time to testify in a dispute.
The phone rings. It's the tenant who called earlier that day about squirrels in her apartment. Her landlord took care of it.
Hatchett suggests a remedy if the problem returns. Moth balls, he says. Squirrels hate them.
LENGTH: Long : 195 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: WAYNE DEEL/Staff. 1. Roanoke City building inspectorby CNBDave Hatchett performs an exterior inspection on homes in Old
Southwest. He is one of only three inspectors who work an inner-city
area that includes about 5,500 rental units. With an overload of
cases and not enough personnel to handle them, Hatchett says, the
department is only "putting out fires." 2. Inspectors have waited
nine years for the owner to repair this Day Avenue Southwest house,
where a fire killed a 6-month-old boy in 1987. 3. Hatchett puts a
condemnation notice on the house at 617 Tazewell Ave. in Southeast
Roanoke. color. 4. Bad plumbing, a falling ceiling and a rotting
floor contributed to the condemnation of this Roanoke apartment.